The Hollywood film business is brutal.
Take sixty-hour workweeks, extended sleep deprivation, endless conflict over time and money, navigating ego-driven personalities and self-important entities, constant vigilance for career pitfalls, and uncertainty about if you’ll ever work again. Add insane money and power and the result is addiction.
The lifestyle, the swag bags, the cars, the pools, the parties, the premieres, the celebrities, the hipitude, the hype, the whole LA thing. Money. Stuff. More money. More stuff. Every weekend. Get more stuff. Make more money.
Normal people from all over the world flock to LA to work in the film business and once there, become Hollywise, forgetting who they really are, where they’re originally from, and why connections to family and friends are important.
Careers are pursued with relentless enthusiasm, rampant ambition, and blinding naivety in a toxic setting where outward success demands utter dedication. We all eventually witnesses ethically, morally or simply mentally challenging situations that make us wonder about our choice of lifestyle.
It’s kinda like a virus specific to LA insidiously spreading throughout the fabric of life there, gradually eroding intelligent choice to a matter of personal gain in money, fame, or status. And remaining immune to it is next to impossible.
Scripts are flipped in parking lots, connections are made amongst the activewear at Nordstrom, and meetings regularly happen on boats. Job offers happen while getting a massage or pedicure, and the dry cleaner pesters you for the identity of the celebrity he’s sure you work for in an attempt to get a signed photo for his wall of fame.
There’s no venue that’s not a hotbed of networking and being seen, and any Sunday pre-dawn runs to 7-11 for smokes or aspirin or Trojans risk unwanted attention. And the odds of your professional success can be determined at any moment of the day or night.
The virus lurks everywhere. Prolonged exposure can turn perfectly nice people into superficial, competitive, self-absorbed, status seekers who are terminally unsatisfied and forever searching.
I woke up one morning certain that I was infected with the virus.
When did my priority shift to making money instead of having fun? Why do I feel so stressed on the movies I work on? When did I start comparing my success with the perceived success of other people, and feeling shitty about myself? Why do I have so many Apple electronic devices? And what’s up with all these pairs of jeans in my closet?
Knowing I was burned out, I dropped out and ran far, far away.
The film industry caught up with me years later on a different continent, in a way I never could have dreamed of, doing something I couldn't possibly have imagined, and I learned that the 'un' in unknown is the same 'un' in unlimited.
