QandA

At the Nuart last weekend for The Nines, Kris Galuska re-introduced himself. He’s a writer I had met at the Austin Film Festival last year. On a short elevator ride, I had tried to convince him that he really needed to move to Los Angeles if he was serious about working as a screenwriter. Apparently, it worked.

At the screening, he started to fill me in on the last twelve months, but I was sure that his experiences would be especially valuable to readers, just as [Adam Davis’s recent essay](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/starting-out-in-hollywood) had been. So I urged him to write it up. Once again, Kris took me up on my suggestion.

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I started writing as a way to pass the time during my first summer away at college. What began as a diversion soon became my obsession. A year or so later, that obsession led me to the amazing, uniquely writer oriented, Austin Film Festival. I chose a panel on pitching and was delighted to see that the writer of Big Fish (one of my favorite movies) was on the panel. Though, I have to admit, I knew nothing more about John August than what was written in his short bio in the festival program. As the panel began I was blown away by John’s ability to give honest and immediately useful advice. He was able to knock down many of the walls around the industry that countless books and “insiders”? had constructed in my mind. I changed my plans so I could attend the rest of the panels John was participating in. Eventually I got up the courage to step up and introduce myself.

I blurted out my name nervously and proceed to elaborate on my dreams of writing and the epic fantasy, action adventure, and science fiction movies I would help create. I wanted to make movies that entertained first and had a message second. I wanted to bring back the good name of the blockbuster and the popcorn flick. I pleaded with him for wisdom and any advice on how I could start my career and become the writer I dreamed I could be.

John’s answer was not a surprise, but it was an answer I dreaded. He told me to move to LA. To move away from the cheap apartments and light traffic of Texas and brave the ever growing expanse of Los Angeles. I left the festival and debated the decision until there were only three days left on my lease, and I would be forced to move out. My parents wanted me to work in New York, so that I could live close to them. I could even live in their house in Jersey until I found a place. NY had always held a certain lofty position in my head as a city made for writers, but I knew that John was right. The subject matter and the style of my writing was more in tune with the studios in California.

Unfortunately, as has been the case far too often, my expanding stomach led me to a different answer. It came in the form of two fortune cookies at a cheap, all I could shove down my face, Chinese buffet. The first said, “Spend this year with your family.”? The second continued, “Don’t be afraid to act now.”? Well who was I to argue with the wisdom of prepackaged, American made, Asian cookies? I packed what fit in my boxy little Scion and left for NY.

I don’t regret the six months I worked in Manhattan. NY is without a doubt a city every writer should spend some time in. You can’t walk down the street without a thousand stories striking your imagination. I worked each day with a constant monolog running through my mind – describing the people, the sights, the smells. Ah the smells”¦ like an expert wine taster you develop the ability to name the location and ingredients of the putrid perfume of alcohol and urine that give each corner of Midtown its distinct flavor.

Despite the unappealing smells and the layer of exhaust that forms a visible cloud of carcinogens in the belly of the Port Authority buss terminal, New York is still a charming, surreal city that I’ll remember fondly. Even though the city overflowed with creative energy, I knew I was not where I was meant to be. I met many artist, musician, and documentary film makers, and they were all passionate and creative people, but every person I met that was doing what I wanted to do ““ write and make movies ““ was visiting from Los Angeles. So, after a month of planning, I quit my job, repacked my motorized shoebox, and made my way from one coast to the other.

I’ve only been in LA for three months now, but I already know I made the right decision. In three months I’ve worked on the set of a commercial and a feature film. I had an internship at the production company responsible for amazing movies such as Kill Bill and Good Will Hunting, and recently I got an assistant job at a small talent agency. Though none of these experiences have been writing relate, they have given me insight, contacts, and a feeling of participation in an industry that was once impregnable.

The best part of living in LA is the realization that anything can happen. You never know who will have a contact that can push you that one step closer. While working as a boom operator on an independent feature, I made small talk with one of the actresses between takes. I explained how I really wanted to write, and I pitched her some of my screenplays. By the end of the day she gave me her card and asked me to send her a copy of “my quirky little thriller,”? as I like to call it, Sex and Pudding. It turned out that she was part of a new independent production company, and they were looking for scripts to pitch to investors. Less then a week later I received a call from her producer. We are now working together to get the project financed.

There is the strong possibility that the movie will not get made. If A-list producers and writers struggle to get their movies in front of an audience, how can an unknown writer with and unknown production company do any better. It is this impossibility that makes movies magic. Whether the movie gets made soon or not, I’ve already got the high from that first phone call. That first call when the producer said she loved my screenplay. It wasn’t a compliment from my mother or a friend or a competition I paid to enter. It was a compliment from another creative person that was willing to risk their time and energy in my story.

I have by no means “made it”? as a writer, so my advice is limited to my experiences so far, but maybe these three suggestions can help others about to make the trek to the magical land of sun, stars, and smog.

1. Change your cell phone to a Los Angeles number as soon as you get out here — preferably with a 323 or an 818 area code. I spent the first month and a half living on Craig’s list, mandy, and other similar sites. I couldn’t even get an e-mail rejection. The day I changed my number I got three calls for gigs.

2. Befriend the assistants and others just above you. Now if you have Jerry Bruckheimer eagerly listening to your pitch of “Lord of the Rings meets The Matrix, but with talking animals”? than by all means use that opportunity, but don’t waist your time stalking celebrities and producers, begging them to read your work. Get their assistant’s assistant to read it, and you’ll have a better shot.

3. Don’t be afraid to pitch and talk to others about your script. I’ve met a lot of people that are afraid of getting their ideas stolen, but if no one ever hears about your project it will never get made. As I discovered, you never know who can help get your script to the right people. Even if nothing happens you’ll get practice pitching which can never hurt.

Looking back it is clear to me why it took me so long to finally make the move to Los Angeles. I was afraid. Not afraid of the move or of leaving my friends and family, I was afraid of loosing my excuse. The excuse that I needed to be in LA that it was my location not my writing that was the problem. If I moved to LA the only thing holding me back would be my own skills and ambition, and that terrified me. I’ve learned in my short life that the thing your most afraid to do is probably the thing you should be doing.

I’m not going to say that everyone of you that wants to be a screenwriter needs to pack up and move to Hollywood. Many great writers and directors have proven that with enough drive and passion you can make a movie anywhere, but for me it was the change… the step I needed to really push me forward. Don’t let fear hold you back. Yes, it is risky to uproot your life to fight for a dream, but risks are what make our lives adventures worth having stories about. Live your life so you have stories to tell, even if they’re made up along the way.

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Questions, suggestions or encouragement for Kris? Leave them in the comments below.

I met [Adam Davis](http://imdb.com/name/nm2515431/) last year. He was a student at Drake University, my alma mater, and came with the high recommendation of a mutual mentor. Adam wrote and directed a lot of short films while he was at Drake, and movies were clearly his calling. He was wondering whether he should bite the bullet and move to Los Angeles. I said yes, definitely — but he should prepare to work his ass off when he got here.

Adam took me at my word. I’ve had lunch with him a few times since he’s moved here, and after our last batch of Baja Fresh, I asked him to write up his experience so far.

Every year, a few thousand recent college grads move to Hollywood, hoping to get started. Here’s how Adam did it. He’s very much mid-process, but notice how much he’s hustling to get his next job. How you can never tell who is going to pay off as a contact. That’s how it works.

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With a goal of becoming a writer/director, I moved out to Los Angeles in late March with my friend from college to try to get work on sets as a production assistant. The first few days were an exhaustive apartment search, and luckily, we were able to find a place in Culver City within the week.

As we waited for our internet to be hooked up, I was able to piggyback on someone’s wireless signal and started the job hunt. I went to my three favorite websites, [craigslist](http://craigslist.com), [mandy.com](http://mandy.com), and [entertainmentcareers.net](http://entertainmentcareers.net). Every day was spent sending out resumes and cover letters for any and all PA jobs I could find. Features, shorts, commercials, music videos, it didn’t matter.

The first week was terrible. No calls, nothing. The feeling of impending doom of being jobless, or even worse, having to get a regular job, was awful.

But in the second week, I started getting calls. I interviewed to be a PA on a short film that was shooting in late April for two weeks with a pay of $20 a day. Having nothing at the time, I agreed to it. But it still didn’t solve the problem of having a job now.

I had another interview for a feature which was supposed to start pre-production at the beginning of April, and got hired on in the art department. That was going to pay $50 a day, which I was ecstatic over. The day before I was supposed to start work, I got a call saying that the movie had been pushed back to August 1st.

So again, no job. Wanting to get on set and make connections, I took a job in the art department for a music video for no pay one weekend. I was told that they had more jobs that paid coming up and if you worked for free they would get you on the paying job. Since April, I still haven’t received calls for a paying gig from them. I’ve received many calls for more non-paying jobs, but none that pay.

But overall, it was a very interesting shoot where I got to spray the band members with chocolate-tinted water to simulate black rain. Just something you don’t get to do very often.

Becoming a little desperate, I started calling people that I had worked with and met last summer, when I had an internship with Marvel Studios. I had worked on a feature for a few days for free, and I called up the 1st AD, who remembered me. He said that the film he was on was fully staffed right now, but if anything came up, he’d let me know.

A day later, he called saying that he needed me to be a key set PA for three days. I snatched up the opportunity, and worked on Dead Air, a zombie horror film.

After that, work on the short film started. It was called The Legend of My Heart-Shaped Anus, a quirky comedy being submitted to Sundance. It was great working with such a small crew because I got to learn a lot about lighting and cameras. And instead of being a PA, I turned into a grip and electric. Wrangling cables, setting up lights, carrying stands, everything. In one scene, I got to drop heart-shaped poo, made out of chocolate, onto two puppets fighting. It sounds strange, but it makes sense when you see the movie. I started thinking that perhaps the mark I would be making in Hollywood is to drop various incarnations of chocolate onto people and things.

Then May rolled around. I applied to more jobs and had a few more interviews, one with Lionsgate in the office of the CEO. They were looking to groom future studio execs, and since I expressed my interest in the creative side, I was told that perhaps a desk job wouldn’t be the best thing for me. I knew that to be true, and I’m very glad they picked up on that and let me know.

Then I had an interview scheduled with a guy who needed a personal assistant as well as a PA on his TV show. I went to the coffee shop we selected to meet at and he never showed and never answered his phone. So that was another one that didn’t work out, but it was for the best because I had an interview to be a PA on a shoot for Fox Reality’s Average Joe: Reality Revealed. I got the job and got to help the producers out with some pre-production for the shoot. We shot the interviews that weekend, and apparently I impressed them enough because on Monday they brought me on board to be an assistant editor since I know Final Cut Pro.

The editing job lasted from May through early July, and during that time I was given enough freedom to work other PA jobs as they came up. The 1st AD that got me on Dead Air, called me to work on a PSA, so I worked as a PA during the day, then went straight to the office to edit through the night. I did that for three days, and luckily my brain didn’t explode due to lack of sleep.

Later in June, a contact that I met last summer during my internship called me with an opportunity to work on the new Judd Apatow produced film, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I jumped at the chance, and got to work on my very first big studio flick. That single night on Forgetting Sarah Marshall was the most fun I’ve ever had on a set.

I then got a job as a PA on an indie feature that’s hopefully going to Sundance, Thunder Geniuses, so I had to end my time at the editing job. Thunder Geniuses shot at a studio, a school, and then in the woods for two weeks and it was the most demanding shoot I’ve been on so far. But it was also extremely rewarding since I was able to make some great connections with a lot of people that can hopefully get me work in the future.

After 18 grueling days, we wrapped and I got a call from the editor of Average Joe: Reality Revealed, asking if I could come back and help out with some more editing to finish up the project. That’s what I worked on last week, and this week I’m not sure if I’ll be working on it again, since we’re almost finished.

I also got a call from my contact to work on the new Will Smith movie, but I had to turn it down because of my previous commitment with the editing job. But my roommate was able to take my place, so that’s a benefit.

I’ve been applying for more PA jobs, but hopefully I’ll get to rely on applying less and less since my network expanded greatly after Thunder Geniuses. But as of right now, I’m back to updating my resume, searching the internet for jobs, and debating whether or not to bug my contacts for work yet. But that’s what I like about the job and the life in Los Angeles. The uncertainty and the excitement of never knowing what’s going to happen next or who might call with the next awesome job. I’d prefer nothing else.