A new type of article makes its debut on Your Industry Insider today with the introduction of the ENTRY POINT INTERVIEW. These short Q & As will provide the reader with the story of how a new member of the industry landed his or her first paying job (or first post-graduate paying job) in entertainment. We congratulate our first profile subject, Rohit Kumar, on his successful entry into the industry, thank him for sharing his story and some of what he’s learned so far, and wish him many years of success.

Hometown: Cliffside Park, NJ

College and degree:  I graduated in May 2010 magna cum laude from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY with a dual computer & systems engineering/business management degree.

Internships:  I managed to get into the intern program at Sirius Satellite Radio in Manhattan during my sophomore year of college, working in the comedy department. That was my first experience in the entertainment world. From there, I interned at a small boutique agency called Creative Entertainment Connections, working for their development executive, which was my first taste of agency life. After college, I got an internship with Intuition Productions out here in Los Angeles, which I landed after doing a long distance Skype interview while still back on the East Coast. I got the leads for my internships at Creative Entertainment Connections and Intuition through a site called EntertainmentCareers.net. I was skeptical about how useful a site like that could be, but I wouldn’t be where I am in this industry today without it.

What made you want to be in entertainment?  Being involved in my college’s improv comedy troupe. I grew up as the only child of two engineers, so engineering was pretty much my future from day one. College was the first time I felt like I could do something off the predetermined path, and when I started performing improv comedy, I knew that I wanted my life to be about entertaining people, whether that was directly or behind-the-scenes.

When did you move to Los Angeles?  I moved in September 2010, once I received the internship opportunity at Intuition Productions.

How have you networked since you arrived?  I’ve never been a big party/large social gathering type of person, so that part of networking was definitely the most daunting to me. But just being in this industry put me well outside of my comfort zone already, so I decided to throw caution to the wind and approach it all head on.

How did you land your job?  After interning at Intuition, I asked my boss there if she knew anyone at any of the four major talent agencies (CAA, ICM, WME, UTA), since I really wanted to get some agency experience. She referred me to the head of Motion Picture Lit at ICM. In the meantime, I met a woman at a party who worked at CAA, and after only about five minutes of conversation, she said she would gladly refer me to the company. I ended up getting in at ICM first, but when a floater position became available at CAA, I moved over and have been working there since then. To me, this experience was eye-opening, because it really showed me how helpful contacts can present themselves anywhere and anytime, and you need to be ready and on top of your game.

What does a talent agency floater do?  A floater is basically an all-purpose assistant who covers for other assistants when they are sick, on vacation, etc. It requires you to think quickly and understand the workings of a particular desk within minutes in order to keep office working smoothly. Being a floater also exposes you to every part of the agency and allows you to gain experience in a variety of areas.

What do you want to do ultimately?  I want to be a producer. I considered the agent route early on, but I don’t have the stomach for it, and at the end of the day, I want to be making movies directly.

Favorite movies & TV shows:  My favorite movies are THE USUAL SUSPECTS, THE STING and AIRPLANE! My favorite TV shows are “Doctor Who,” “Family Guy,” “The Office,” “Stargate SG-1,” and “Spongebob Squarepants.” (Yes, I admit to loving
Spongebob.)

Career role models/idols:  My career models are Scott Rudin and Harvey Weinstein, because they produce films that I feel don’t sacrifice art for commercial viability. I realize that the positions they hold in the industry are rare and difficult to achieve, but that’s also why I feel they make excellent role models, as they inspire me to continue to work hard.

What’s the best career advice you’ve gotten so far? This came from my mentor at Intuition Productions and it was simply, “Talk to everyone.” As most people realizes within days of starting in Hollywood, this is an industry of people, and the more people you know and the better you know them, the better chance you have at success. It seems like common sense, but you don’t fully grasp the truth of until you see how it permeates everything we do.

Know anyone who could use an entertainment industry insider? Encourage them to sign up on the YII home page to receive our Mogul Mindset eBlasts today!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Current position:  Staff Writer, “Futurama”

Hometown:  Middletown, Ohio

College/Degree:  Miami University in Oxford, Ohio/English Literature

Did you have any internships when you were in school?  No. I was always working to pay for my schooling and make sure that my mom and dad had to cover as little as possible.

What were your favorite TV shows when you were a kid?  To go back to the fantastical elements of my imagination, I loved “The A‑Team” and “Dukes of Hazzard.” I also was always into bawdy comedies. “Three’s Company” was my favorite show as a kid even though I know now I didn’t get half of the stuff that was happening on the show.

What was it that made you want to be a writer? What made you want to work in television?  I knew from the time I was 12 that I was going to write. I had a very active imagination as a kid. I was one of those kids who preferred being alone making up stories with GI Joe action figures more than learning how to hit a baseball or throw a football. Once I got to junior high and high school, I had teachers who encouraged me and pushed me to pursue it. And so I did.

What was your first job in the business? When I was a high school senior, I found out my mother used to work for this man whose daughter is Ann Donahue, a TV producer who has since co-created the “CSI” franchise. I met Ann at her dad’s retirement party. When I heard that she wrote for television, I just thought that would be the greatest gig in the world. I had no idea what the execution was or formatting or anything like that. But just the idea of telling stories on TV just sounded so cool. So I told her that I would love to do that. She told me to go to college and get my degree and, when I got to my senior year of college, if I still felt that way, to call her before I graduated and she would see what she could do.

So mid‑way through my senior year of college, I gave her a shout and she said, “All right, here’s what you need to do: You need to save your money. You need to be prepared to be poor and starve and you need to live in LA; but if you get here, I will do whatever I can to help you out.” So three months after I graduated from college, I moved to LA with nothing. But I lucked out. Ann was a producer on a new show called “Murder One.” Just before I arrived, a kid who was a PA on the show left and there was a position available. Ann got me in for an interview with Steven Bochco, who is the executive producer of the show and I got the job. That started my TV career.

As a PA, you get to see how everybody does everything, which I think is the most valuable job in production, whether it’s in film or TV. You also get to meet everybody and see what they do. That experience really solidified for me how much I wanted to write television. I have always had a blue collar work ethic and TV writing really is a day‑to‑day grind. Having a job to go to every day really makes me a better worker and a better person and, you know, just gives me some real focus.

Where did you go from “Murder One”?  I stayed at Steven Bochco’s company for three years. When I wanted to start working in the writer’s offices, I asked the producers if I could learn to be a script coordinator for a pilot called “Total Security.” They let me do that, which was really cool. That was my first job working directly with writers. “Total Security” only lasted about six month, though.

And then I had a six month period of unemployment. I thought, “Maybe this isn’t going to work out for me.” I was planning on becoming a teacher, but then I got a call out of the blue from someone associated with “Futurama,” which hadn’t begun production yet. The writers had started to convene and they needed a writer’s assistant. Somehow, they’d gotten my resume. I still don’t know how. I was the first writer’s assistant for the show and that began my relationship with the writers, most of whom still work on it. I did that for two years, which ended up being about three seasons. I got my first writing credit when I co‑wrote the season two finale.

I got a little burned out after that because we were working so hard and there was no time for anything else. I had just recently met my future wife, who was moving over from Australia. I knew if she was coming here to be with me, I needed a different job so I could have time with her. I stepped away from the show to concentrate on writing, which worked out because while I was working on “Futurama,” I had started writing for Matt Groening’s comic book company, Bongo Comics, which does “The Simpsons” comics and “Futurama” comics. I was lucky in the sense that I could afford to leave a full‑time job and just write freelance comic books and pay the bills while I got to know Katie.

Eventually, though, I realized that I needed insurance and the kind of day‑to‑day grind that I enjoy. That started to gnaw at me again. I wanted to be back in TV. “NYPD Blue” called me and they were looking for a script coordinator for the seventh season of the show. I stayed for the show’s final five seasons, during which time I got a produced writing credit on the show, which was great. So I bounced back and forth from comedy and drama quite a bit, which was really valuable because it allowed me to figure out what type of writer I wanted to be, what type of writing excited me, and what kind of writer’s room or writing experience I wanted. After “NYPD Blue” ended, I took a slew of script coordinating jobs on shows that either would last a season or two or just weren’t very fulfilling experiences, like “Raising the Bar” and “The New 90210.”

“Futurama” was picked back up in the spring of 2009. As soon as I heard it was coming back, I called David Cohen, the show runner, and told him I wanted to write for the show. I’d been writing the “Futurama” comics for almost 10 years at that point, so my ‘sell’ was that I was still immersed in the world.  I knew the voices.  He could hire me and I’d come in and not miss a beat. But he couldn’t bring me on as a staff writer because he’d already spent his writing budget on the higher level guys that came back. But he really wanted me on the show so we agreed that I would come back as a writer’s assistant, but I would get my own produced script. So I came back to the show in 2009, and we did 26 episodes; one of which was my first full writing credit on a sitcom or animated show. And after those 26 episodes, we got picked up for another 26 more. And then that’s when I got promoted to staff writer, which is the middle of the writing season that we’re in right now. So far, I have written two scripts out of the episodes that we’re working on. I may be doing another.

You were just nominated for a Writer’s Guild Award. Was that for the episode you wrote for last season?  Yes. “The Silence of the Clamps,” the episode that I asked for when I was a writer’s assistant is the one that I am nominated for, which is just craziness. It’s just been an amazing ride since I’ve been back with the show.  It just keeps getting better. The awards will be given out in February.

What do you consider your big break?  Writing that “The Silence of the Clamps” episode. That script led the team that I work with to trust me. If they give me an assignment, they’ll get a good draft back for us to do to rewrite in the writer’s room. It’s been such a spring board for my career. It’s one thing to have a freelance episode under your belt and on your resume. But once you are on a staff full time and you start to accumulate credits, everybody starts to take you seriously.

Did you have representation when you went back to “Futurama”?  I had a manager who I had started working with just before I went back. But it was mostly for the feature side of the industry. I did not hook up with an agent until I got promoted last March. I’m currently repped by Gersh.

What’s the best career advice you ever got?  The best career advice I have ever received or that I can give is that you need to always be writing. You can’t just write one script and think that that’s it. Your career is not going to be built on one screenplay sale or one staff writing job or one comic book script. It can be very easy to get frustrated, after a year’s time of nothing happening. And there’s a tendency to think that somebody like J.J. Abrams just became a monster show runner, director, writer out of the blue or that Aaron Sorkin wrote one great thing and then was suddenly a rock star. That’s not the case. So once you’re done with the one script, start working on the next.

Now I’m looking for a “eureka” moment when you realized you did or did not want to do something or that you should do something different.  I had one particular job. I won’t name names but I worked for a particular producer as an assistant during that period after “NYPD Blue” and before I went back to “Futurama.” I was brought on under the pretext that I would be working with the writers and learning things in the writer’s room. The job turned out to be purely a personal assistant job and I was unceremoniously let go just because the guy just did not like me.  He said I wasn’t prepared to work in production, which I had been doing for 10 years prior to that. But him firing me was the absolute best moment of relief in my career because I
knew at that moment I would never again take a job like that.

Describe a typical workday in your current position.  We get to work around 10:00 and convene in the writer’s room. Typically, we’re either rewriting a script a writer has turned in, breaking a new story assigned to a writer to go out and write on their own or rewriting animatics or colors of scripts that have already been recorded. We usually work to about 7 or 7:30. We’ve been doing it long enough that it doesn’t require work until 2:00 in the morning to get it right.

We may have already covered this. Worst job or worst day in the entertainment industry?  Assisting that producer was the worst job hands down. The worst job I’ve ever had. [LAUGHTER] Not only in this industry. It was worse than when I worked at McDonald’s as a 16 year old. Flipping burgers to make extra money in high school was twice as good as that job. That’s how bad that was.

Conversely, the best job or best days in the entertainment industry?  I think the best job is the one I’m in now. I am so lucky to be here, to have a job that I absolutely enjoy going to and that I look forward to every day. And some of the stuff that has come from this job, I never dreamed about; namely the Writer’s Guild Award nomination. I didn’t think I had a shot in hell of ever getting nominated for that. I had such little hope that I thought I was going to get nominated that I didn’t even know what day the nominations were announced. My wife called me. She said, “You didn’t tell me you got nominated.” “I was like, ‘Nominated for what?’” So I go to the WGA site and start scrolling through the nominees. My phone starts getting texts. Facebook starts getting these messages. I was like, No way. I could not even fathom that this was happening. It’s pretty easy to say that that was like the best moment of my career thus far.

What’s the best thing about your current job?  The guys I work with. I have learned so much from them. I continue to learn so much from them. They are all fantastic professionals who understand that there’s a way to write a great show and produce a great show and that there’s also a time to call it a night and go home and be with your family. They are my heroes and I keep working to be them one of these days.

What’s the worst thing about your current job?  I am going to tell you right now. There’s nothing bad about this job.  I mean, honestly. That is the best answer I can give you.

I’m looking for a brush with greatness.  It can be a celebrity encounter or just being exposed to someone being brilliant at what they do.  My first year in the business, when I was working on the Fox lot as a PA on “Murder One,” Tom Hanks was working on “That Thing You Do” at the Darryl Zanuck stage. I had noticed that he drove this pickup truck and I knew where he parked. Being very ballsy, I left the first (crappy) screenplay I had ever written on the windshield of his truck. I didn’t think anything would ever come of it; he’ll just throw it away or whatever. About a week later, I get a call from CAA and they’re like, “Hello, Mr. Rogers. Mr. Hanks sent your script over to us. We wanted to know how you came into contact with him.” I just told them straight out, “I don’t know him. I just put my script on his car.” They were very polite. They told me they couldn’t accept unsolicited scripts but thought I’d be happy to know he sent it over for me.

The next day I saw him sitting outside of the Zanuck Theater taking a break. And I got the guts to walk up to him. I put my hand out and said, “You know, I’m the kid who put the script on your car. I just want to say thanks for not throwing it away.” He was very, very kind and gracious. He said, “Well, there are certain ways we do things in this town. Now, you’ve learned that that’s the way this works. Next time we’ll do it differently, right?” I was like, “All right, sir.” That’s my one fun story with a megastar in this town.

That’s wonderful. Okay, so what’s the one thing you wish you would have known when you started?  This kind of goes back to something I said earlier. No matter how successful someone is or how quickly they become successful, success is never overnight in this industry. Especially back in the day, you would read about people selling scripts for millions of dollars or, you know, getting two shows on the air. In a sound bite, it seems like they just stepped off the bus and the town suddenly put their arms around them and threw them a bunch of money. It would have been great to know that it takes a lot of years of writing and getting to know people in this industry and developing relationships. You know, all those things come together to build a career and, you know, that’s the kind of thing that I wish I had known.  You know, that you just can’t write a crappy screenplay and put it on Tom Hanks’ car and sell it for a million bucks.

Last question. So what’s your next move?  I would love to ride out the “Futurama” train as long as Comedy Central keeps picking it up and as long as the guys in the room don’t get sick of me. Outside of “Futurama,” I have an animated feature I’ve written that I’ve got pitch meetings set up for. It’s been a pet project for three years and finally being able to send it out and meet people about it is pretty exciting. I’m also optioning a book about the creators of “Superman” called “Men of Tomorrow.”

If you want to read about other TV writers, check out these profiles of Amanda Segel and Sterling Anderson.

Know anyone who could use an entertainment industry insider? Encourage them to sign up on the YII home page to receive our Mogul Mindset eBlasts today!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

This is a good thing for readers with big dreams who are just starting out or who feel stuck where they are. She recounts the lean years in sometimes hilarious detail, which can make those going through their lean years now feel a lot better. She shares stories of auditions gone wrong, about being a great nanny, about not getting a much-desired job as an NBC page, and about time spent working as a production assistant on a cable show featuring a physic communicating with studio audience members’ dead relatives.

But beyond the foibles and lost opportunities are some behaviors which contributed to Kaling’s success. Yes, being smart and talented helped, but what can you take away from Mindy Kaling’s entertainment career and embrace for your own career?

1. Obsess and Analyze and Obsess Some More - In this case, I’m talking about comedy. Hours spent watching early Comedy Central programming and mid-afternoon repeats of “Saturday Night Live” and “Kids in the Hall” as a kid gave Kaling her early start absorbing, thinking about, and reenacting her favorite comedy bits. Essays included in her book, titled “Types of Women in Romantic Comedies Who Are Not Real” and “My Favorite Eleven Moments in Comedy,” make it clear that the obsession and analysis continue.

2. Find your people - During the time that Kaling became a student of comedy, she shifted away from her previous click of shopaholic friends to spend time with Mavis, a classmate who wanted to watch the same TV shows and movies that she did. In college, she found Brenda, another best friend who similarly shared her interests. This relationship would be instrumental in Kaling’s career breakthrough. She writes in her book, “I love comedy and now surround myself with people who love to talk about it as much as I do.” In an elite sitcom writer’s room, she continues to find her people.

3. Develop Your Voice - Kaling and Mavis not only watched comedy but also wrote and recorded their own sketches using favorite characters from “Saturday Night Live.” She and Brenda both did theater in college(with Kaling writing one-acts and Brenda starring in a number of productions) and lived together in New York when they were just starting out. “Brenda and I have always done ‘bits,’ even before we knew they were called ‘bits,’” she wrote. “We would take on characters, acting like them for a while on the way to the subway or getting ready to go out.” This is a valuable pastime for people who want to be performers or writers, as they soon learned.

4. Make it real – While they were struggling in New York trying to find a way into show business, Kaling and Brenda decided to write something together to perform in. After some initial struggle, they settled on developing one of their ‘bits’ into a play called “Matt & Ben,” which was a fictionalized version of the relationship between best friends Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Brenda played Matt Damon and Kaling played Ben Affleck. They produced it initially for the “New York International Fringe Festival” and won “Best Play.” That changed everything. Producers contacted them to put the play up Off-Broadway, which they did. It turned into a sold-out sensation, and got them a pilot deal which ultimately didn’t go forward. By then, though, she had gotten hired as a staff writer on an NBC show that was a remake of a British show called “The Office” so it didn’t matter. She had broken in.

This book is not for everyone. As I said earlier, Kaling doesn’t have a lot of career ground to cover and much of this book is more observational humor than strict bio material. Kaling has many obsessions besides comedy and she has no qualms about waxing on and on about them. For instance, the book includes an essay called “I Love Diets,” one which details “Best Friend Rights and Responsibilities” and another one that asks (but does not answer) the burning question, “Who Do Men Put on Their Shoes So Slowly?” Some, like me, will appreciate and enjoy Kaling’s humor even when the subject matter isn’t something of particular interest. Others might get impatient with the diversions. But it’s a quick read and there’s a lot to be gleaned from it for those just starting out in showbiz and those who want to be.

Know anyone who could use an entertainment industry insider? Encourage them to sign up on the YII home page to receive our Mogul Mindset eBlasts today!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The career of today’s profile subject seems almost preordained when you find out about his childhood. Parents with an interest (and background, in the case of his mother) in the film business coupled with an inexplicable early sense that China would becoming a dominant force in the world seem to be the key ingredients to what Robert Cain is doing now. His company name, Pacific Bridge, could actually be his job title. Read on to find out about how his internships helped pave the way and about how his first paid day was also his worst day…

Current position (or recently-completed project or projects):  I am a founder and partner in a company called Pacific Bridge Pictures, which is focused on film & TV production in Asia and co-productions between Chinese and U. S. entities. We have several projects in development; a low-budget romantic comedy, for instance, that will shoot in Mandarin for the Chinese market. We are developing English-language films that will shoot partly in China and partly in the U.S. And we are representing studio pictures with budgets of up to $200 million each, helping the studios attract partners and financing from China.

Acting as the intermediary between the major U.S. studios and Chinese film entities and financing entities?  Yes, exactly. I should mention we do consulting, too. We’re working with some producers in China on animation projects and with U.S. entertainment companies, advising and doing business plans.

Hometown:  I was born in New York, but grew up mostly in Cincinnati, Ohio. My family is all in New England now.

College and degree:  A Bachelor’s in East Asian studies from Harvard College and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

What made you major in East Asian studies?  It sounds like I am making this up, but I had an epiphany when I was 12 years old growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio that China was going to become very important to the world. And at 12, I wasn’t thinking about money or anything like that. But I was interested in China and I decided to commit as much as I could to learning about it and going there and doing work there. This was in 1974, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, although I didn’t know anything about that at the time.

Did you have an internship while you were in school?  The summer between my two years at Wharton, I turned down a very lucrative summer job consulting in New York to intern in L.A. for New Line Cinema and for the Writer’s Guild. I couldn’t afford to do that, but I did anyway. I wanted to get into Hollywood.

What made you want to be in entertainment? What were you picturing when you envisioned working in the industry?  I had always loved movies. My parents both had amateur involvement in entertainment. Actually, my mother worked for MGM when she was younger. So an appreciation for movies was kind of in the blood. I decided when I started business school that I want to have some involvement in entertainment. So part of the purpose of interning was to come check it out, see if I liked the business and if I wanted to live in LA, and, if so, to get a sense of what I wanted to do.

What did you learn from your internships? Did they entice you?  Yes, absolutely. They were both great. New Line was terrific because it gave me a rotation through an entire mini major studio. I got to work in development, casting, marketing, and distribution. I got to meet the people running those departments and work with them. At the Writer’s Guild, I had a very specific project doing a study on the creative rights of screenwriters. It gave me the desire to learn more about screenwriting, which ultimately I picked up and started to do on the side. And in addition to the internships, I started working as a script reader for a couple of different companies, including Edward Scherick’s. He was a prominent producer at the time.

When you got your MBA, did you move out here right away?  Literally. I had my diploma in hand, grabbed my new wife, jumped in a beat-up old car, and drove across country back to L.A.

And what was your first job in the entertainment industry?  My first paying position was with the Screen Actor’s Guild as the Director of Research, which really meant I was the first MBA they had ever hired. My main focus was providing the Guild Leadership and the president with information on the industry, and especially supporting them with their negotiations with the studios and the employers of the actors.

So give me an idea of your career path from there.  Okay. My idea, which I wouldn’t necessarily recommend, was to become a generalist and work in as many areas of the business as I could.

After SAG, I went over to the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers (AMPTP), which is the Collective Bargaining Organization for the major studios. I ended up doing the negotiations for all the talent guilds. And then I went to Spelling Entertainment, Aaron Spelling’s company. I was the head of business development there, launching new divisions. I worked in finance, creative development, distribution, marketing… That was really great. I got to launch a couple of companies together with some of the executives there. We launched what became a very big TV division, Big Ticket Television. I also had a hand in building Spelling Films, which did a lot of great movies.

Then I launched an entertainment-related startup. It failed, but it got me a taste of being outside of corporate roles and being entrepreneurial. My career since then has really been, you know, what I described producing and consulting. I have had a few stints that I can mention. I have made some movies in China. I worked in Russia for three years, setting up and running production companies. I have launched digital media companies. A few of them have worked out, some of them haven’t. I did other advisory work for the studios in Hollywood and for entertainment companies around the world.

It sounds like when you left Spelling, your experience had been with domestic film and television. When did you pull that China piece from your childhood into the picture?  Actually, while I was at Spelling, almost from the time I started, I seized the responsibility of approaching Chinese buyers to try to make some sales. And I had worked in China before that as early as 1987. But as far as entertainment goes, in 1995, I started interacting with Chinese companies and potential buyers and partners. Nobody had enough money at that point to buy any of our shows, but I was focused on developing relationships. Then the first major project I did was in 2001 when I was brought in by CCTV, a big Chinese television network, to help them produce a television broadcast, a ‘three tenors’ concert called, “Three Tenors of the Forbidden City.” I advised them on production and taught them how to do delivery to international buyers and then I sold the broadcast rights around the world.

You mentioned that you had worked in China before Spelling, but that it was not in entertainment.  I started doing strategy consulting right out of college for one of the big Boston firms called Monitor Group. I was in China for about three years, then I got a client for myself in Hong Kong and moved there. I wound up living in Hong Kong and Taipei, Taiwan and a little bit in Shanghai for a few years.

Now I’m going to ask you a few questions about your path and your point of view, et cetera… The first question is, “What’s the best career advice you ever got?”  One of the heads of the television department at Universal told me to just be politely persistent, that that had been the key for him to getting where he was. What he meant was, it’s an industry that tends to reject; you know, put up walls, reject people, reject ideas, even good ones. You just have to bulldoze through that, but in a way that will encourage a long-term relationship.

Now, I’m looking for a “eureka” moment when you realized that you did or did not want to do something or that you should do something differently.  The thing that jumps to mind is screenwriting. I first had a notion that I wanted to write screenplays in college. I’m a good writer and I always did very well with my writing. But for some reason, it was daunting. I was afraid of plunging in and writing scripts. And it took a real push. I was in Russia running a production company, having an incredibly difficult time finding anything that I could produce. Sort of out of desperation, I started writing, thinking that I could write better than the stuff I’m seeing. It was hard for sure, but I found immediately that I loved it and I was good at it. I kicked myself at the time for not starting 20 years earlier. And the lesson was that I had let fear get in the way and I lost a lot of time not pursuing something I really wanted to do. Since then, I have won all kinds of awards and I have had interest in my scripts from production companies. It’s only been a few years since I actually started writing, but I know I will get some things produced before long.

So describe a typical workday in your current position or your current position?  I have very long days by choice. Once I get my kids off at school in the morning, I probably spend half my day in meetings with a mix of writers, directors and producers, production company executives, partners and clients I’m advising. I try to limit that to half my day. The other half I spend writing, which could be writing a business plan or a contract. It could be working on a screenplay, although that tends to happen after hours. And then late into the night, I will be on the phone with China and sometimes people in other places around the world.

What is the worst job or worst day you’ve had in the entertainment industry?  I don’t want to name names, but the summer I came out here, my internship wasn’t starting until a week later so I took a temp job with the office of a very famous producer. I wasn’t working directly for him. I was working for the head of business affairs. But I was walking by his office and noticed him sitting in an office just basically munching on a sandwich doing nothing else. So I just very sort of politely said hi and asked if I could take 30 seconds to tell him about myself. He said yes, so I did and then I told him I’d love to get him my resume. He said sure. And then at the end of the day, I saw him walking down the hall. He was talking to somebody. I just said, “Oh, hi. I’ll send you my resume.” He looked a little upset. I got a call from the temp agency that night saying that he had called to tell them that I was not to show up the next day, that I was never to contact him again, and that I was probably never going to work another day in the industry.

That’s crazy. But not unheard of.  I probably overstepped my bounds. But I know I wasn’t obnoxious. Anyway, you run into those I’m glad I did it. I haven’t had a worse day than that since. I guess if I’m going to have a worst day, having it on the first day is probably the best way to do it.

So what’s the best thing about your current job?  Oh, so many things. My favorite thing is working with other people and even working on my own to create stories, telling stories. That’s why I came here. It’s really telling stories that can have a positive impact on people, that shed light on some situation or problem that deals with what it is to be human and in an uplifting way. You know, when I really step back from it and think about it, I think what we do in this business of making movies, it’s very important. And to me, that can be spiritual at its best.

What’s the worst thing about your current job?  I think it goes back to something I said earlier. The worst thing is when I realize that I am letting my own fears or belief in my limitations get in the way of doing the best that I can. It can be a very daunting and challenging business and I am really most effective when I set my worries aside. I try to be as positive and productive and generous as I can and the worst times are when I realize that I haven’t been behaving that way because I’m being selfish or fearful.

I’m looking for a brush with greatness. It can be a celebrity encounter or just being exposed to somebody being brilliant at what they do.  One of the things that brought me here was a movie called FIELD OF DREAMS written and directed by Phil Alden Robinson. And in my internship for the Writer’s Guild, as luck would have it, Phil Alden Robinson was on the board for the Writer’s Guild and he had a personal interest in writer’s creative rights. So I got to work with him. One time I asked him to sit down and tell me how he put together FIELD OF DREAMS. It was a great story. He’s great storyteller. It was very inspiring and exciting to meet somebody like that and get to work with them in my first few weeks in the business.

Have you connected with him since to tell him what impact he had?  Yeah not in a while but, yes, I did. I corresponded with him from time to time.

Next question: What’s the one thing you wish you would have known when you started?  I wish I had known that I could write a screenplay and finish it. Then, more than that, that I could do it pretty well.

What do you consider the secret of your success and/or what advice would you give to somebody starting out in the business?  Find yourself a mentor, a true mentor. Someone who is 10 or 12 years older who has been down the path that you want to go, who you genuinely connect with, who will take an interest in helping you along the path, giving you valuable advice, you know, helping you through challenges. Find someone who will make a personal investment, who will take a stake in your success.

What is your next move? Where do you go from here?  Well, it’s very possible I’m going to move over to China again in the near term. Whether I do or don’t, I’ve put together a company that is focused on creating scripts and projects for coproduction between China and the U.S. So I’m raising money for that and, you know, getting that up and running is really the next step.

To find out more about Robert or contact him, visit his company’s website here. To learn more about the film business in China, visit Robert’s blog here.

Know anyone who could use an entertainment industry insider? Encourage them to sign up on the YII home page to receive our Mogul Mindset eBlasts today!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Last year, Jay Z was added to the Your Industry Insider honorary board of directors. He, too, had made bold, calculated moves from an early age which led him to his current position as hip-hop superstar performer and producer, and multimillionaire entrepreneur. Here’s the post on Jay Z’s career path.

Your Industry Insider is proud to add a third member to the honorary board: host, producer, and brand ambassador Ryan Seacrest. His path to mogul-dom was as different from Richard Branson’s and Jay Z’s as those two were to each other’s. However, there are some similarities and Seacrest’s path has definitely led him to a position in the industry which warrants him a seat at this table.

Unlike the previous members of the honorary Your Industry Insider board of directors, Ryan Seacrest has yet to write a book about his career. This means we’re forced to rely on quotes, information conveyed in interviews, and bios on the “American Idol” site and others. Luckily, there is no shortage of information to be found on Ryan Seacrest’s professional past, current endeavors, and plans for the future.

Here are some of the specific lessons from Seacrest’s career that you can apply to your own path to mogul-dom:

Develop your core passions and exploit them.  Often when you find out about someone ultrasuccessful, they seem to have appeared on the scene overnight. But though there are very occasionally overnight successes in entertainment (often thanks to the flukishness of reality TV stardom), the real success stories frequently start with an early enthusiasm worked on in obscurity before being recognized and brought to a larger audience.

In Ryan Seacrest’s case, his hosting duties started with practice radio shows done as a pre-teen at home into a cassette recorder. An internship at a top Atlanta radio show turned into slot as a fill-in night DJ and then a college job hosting an ESPN game show. By the time he landed his first radio DJ job in Los Angeles at age 20, he’d been working in entertainment for four years.

Identify relevant role models and follow in their footsteps.  Seacrest has taken this to a literal degree, with “American Top 40” founder and first host, Casey Kasem, and host and longtime mogul Dick Clark being early influences. He became the host of “AT40” in 2004 and is now a co-host of Dick Clark’s “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.” He also married the top 40 DJ side of his career with the TV host side when he landed the hosting duties at “American Idol,” which has a lot of the same attributes as the show Dick Clark broke through on, “American Bandstand.” (Music-themed, youth-oriented.)

Branch out.  When hosting “American Idol” made him into a household name and a recognized commodity in the industry, he did not relax into that role as his sole pursuit. That is when he took over “AT40” and also replaced DJ Rick Dees on a popular morning drive radio show which was subsequently named “On Air With Ryan Seacrest.” He has been quoted as having a fear of turning into a has-been the way some of the stars from his childhood did, but whatever the reason, he is going on all cylinders.

Diversify.  This is a big one and I don’t think you can be a mogul without multiple pursuits. When he became a core draw as host “American Idol,” he recognized the opportunity it afforded him not just as a performer. “It allows me the exposure and the access to the public and to the executives in our business,” he told Esquire magazine. This is when he branched out into producing, eventually landing a $21 million with the E! Network to develop, produce and host a variety of programs. Not bad for a 32 year-old.

Look ahead.  In Fortune magazine, Seacrest recently commented on the future of entertainment: “We’re seeing platform, technology, and content all converging, and it’s happening quickly,” he said. “It’s exciting to me. There’s an appetite for more original content than ever, and I have a company that creates content, whether it’s distributed in short form, reality form, live form, or game form.” Like the other moguls on the board, Seacrest has used his vision, his talent, his savvy, and his blood, sweat, and tears to develop a career on the cutting edge of his field.

Welcome to the board, Ryan Seacrest! We look forward to seeing where you go in the years to come!

Know anyone who could use an entertainment industry insider? Encourage them to sign up on the YII home page to receive our Mogul Mindset eBlasts today!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

I think most of us will agree by now that Linked In is a valuable professional tool that should be used, but a lot of people are flummoxed when it comes to setting up a profile and navigating around the site. Here’s a primer on why everyone should be on Linked In and how to use it: “Your Essential LinkedIn Guide: Harness the Awesomeness” It was the most popular post of the year.

The good old-fashioned resume has been around for ages and is still the core tool for professional development (aka landing better and better jobs). However, people are still making the same basic mistakes (not just in entertainment but in all fields). So here’s a gem that was much-shared early in the year: “Four Things Your Entertainment Resume Should Not Say About You.”

But what about the cover letter? Everyone knows a resume without a cover letter is a big mistake. But how long should the ideal cover letter be and how much of your career should it cover? How much should it be customized for each job? Here’s the inside skinny on cover letters that get the job done: “Four Secrets to Winning Entertainment Cover Letters.”

Finding a job opening in the entertainment industry is tougher than ever. Many people turn to temping to help make ends meet and get an all-important foot in the door, but they have no idea how to turn a three day gig into an opportunity for a permanent job. Don’t get me wrong- it’s not easy. But there are ways to give yourself better odds of becoming a full time employee. “How to Get Hired From an Entertainment Temp Job.”

You’ve landed job interviews and you think you’ve said the right things but for some reason, you never get called back for a second interview, much less landed the job. Read this one to make sure you are saying the right things – and all the right things – to give yourself the best shot at getting hired: “Three Things You Must Say in Your Entertainment Job Interview.” And while we’re on the subject of interviews, read this one to make sure you don’t end up with the wrong job: “Five Warning Signs You Might Not Want the Entertainment Job You Are Interviewing For.”

You’ve done everything right, but still the job went to someone else. Read this one to get tips on turning a job rejection into a new opportunity (maybe even a better one) at the same place: “Three Must-Dos When You Don’t Get the Job.”

We’re finishing up this round up with three that cover broader topics, “Four People You Should Not Take Career Advice From,” “Entertainment Career Stability: Sometimes Your Mother Is Right,” and “The Unreturned Phone Call: It’s Not You, It’s Them - Always.”

And for extra credit – and to get more entertainment career lessons - check out this review of Bossypants by Tina Fey. It’s a great book and I’ve pulled some of the many lessons from the book and included them in the review.

Please feel free to comment on any of these posts if you agree or even disagree with the advice. And if you’ve enjoyed them, subscribe to the Mogul Mindset weekly eblasts on the Your Industry Insider homepage to keep up on new content and receive advance notice & info on the release of the upcoming YII book, “Breaking Into the Biz: the Essential Insider’s Guide to Launching an Entertainment Industry Career.”

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Current position (or recently-completed project or projects):  I am currently finishing a script assignment and doing a rewrite of my first novel, as well as doing consulting on a new one hour network TV show. I’m also doing my list for next year’s film festival appearances and panels. I want to stick with California, but even limiting myself that way, I can go to three or four a month.

Hometown:  Raised in Tuskegee, Alabama in the segregated South; moved to Davis, California, a liberal college town.

College and degree:  St. Mary’s College, BA in English.

Did you have any internships while you were in college?  My first two years, I was a religious studies major. I had some wacky internships with a lot of these, let’s say, “religious leaders,” in the community. I declared English as my major during my junior year and I had to take 22 English classes in my last two years of college to catch up so I didn’t have any internships for that major.

What made you want to be a writer and/or what made you want to be in film or television?  There are two different answers and they are not related. I was the first and the youngest black wine maker in Napa Valley. A writer named David Sheff did a feature article on me for “Playboy Magazine.” I literally left the winery for the interview in a wine-stained shirt and jumped in my truck. He greeted me with a cup of coffee at his Sonoma Valley house. I looked over his shoulder and saw a big poster of John Lennon.  He had actually done an interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono for “Playboy.” I remember thinking, “I would love to be a writer. I don’t know how to be one, but I know I want to be one.”

The other one was when a lawyer friend of mine who worked at the talent agency ICM sent me a screenplay as a joke. After I read it, I said that I thought it was good, that I enjoyed reading it. Meaning that I didn’t think it was anything great. He said, “Well, the joke is on you because that screenplay sold for $3 million.” It wasn’t the money that inspired me. It was the fact that I read the screenplay and thought, “I could do this and I could do it better.” Based on that, I bought every book ever printed on screenwriting and sort of went through a self-taught apprenticeship.

I wrote my first screenplay and showed it to my lawyer friend and his assistant. They both said it was terrible. So I wrote another screenplay, and gave it to the same friend, who liked it this time. So I sent it to a couple more friends, one of whom was starting to become known as an actor, with the promise that neither of them shows it to anybody. The next thing I know, I got a phone call from a guy named Michael Besman at TriStar Pictures. He told me he read this wonderful script that was given to him by my actor friend and he wanted to meet with me. That call started my career.

Do you remember the name of the so-so screenplay your friend sent you? BASIC INSTINCT by Joe Eszterhas.

Of course… So what was your first paying job in the industry? I think the first money I was paid was by Columbia Pictures. A nice gentleman named Garreth Wiggins read my samples and liked my writing. We met and he asked me what kind of stuff I liked to write.  I said the movie that made me want to become a writer was TENDER MERCIES. Small town character pieces were my favorite and I’d always wanted to do a remake of RAINMAKER, which is about a man who ventures into a town and somehow solves everybody’s problems.  And then they have to reevaluate everything because they discover this stranger who changed their lives was a felon. Garreth Wiggins paid me $40,000 to write it.  That was my first job. And the title of the film was GUS and it was never made.

What do you consider your big break?  My writing partner at the time and I sold a spec script for a considerable amount of money to the late Dawn Steel when she was at Disney. 

Did that project make any progress? Did it get made?  We got a lot of money, and it never got made. But this is kind of funny. This was the old days, remember? From coming up with the concept to finishing it was about five weeks. We turned it in to our agent, I think, on a Thursday. We got a preemptive offer to take it off the market on Monday morning. And I think the following Thursday, we got our first check. It definitely doesn’t work that way today.

So now I’d like to cover the big beats of your career. Fill in the blanks and then bring me up to the present. What I found out rather quickly is that I had a knack for fixing scripts. And so the first five years of my career, I got a lot of rewrite jobs. And probably made more money than I ever have in my career. I was going from job to job rewriting a lot of known writers, big projects, without getting any credit. I didn’t know any better. I thought this was what my career was going to be.

And then I met producer-director Robert Greenwald, who really was an inspiration and a true mentor, on the job and in life. He’d won an Emmy for directing Farrah Fawcett in “The Burning Bed,” which was a movie-of-the-week (MOWs), a format he specialized in. He read my work and brought me in for a job, and just kept bringing me back. And after a couple of years of writing with Robert on some really amazing projects, he hired me to write “Three Friends,” a miniseries about Coretta Scott King, Myrlie Evers, and Dr. Betty Shabazz. I went to Atlanta to follow around Coretta Scott King, which was amazing. And then I had to interview Myrlie Evers, Medgar Evers’ widow. And then I went and met the six daughters of Dr. Betty Shabazz.

Somewhere around this time, Robert said to me, “You are the best kept secret in Hollywood.” At the time, I was rewriting everybody and not getting any credit. He was just telling me how reliable I was as a writer. That was when I said, “I think I want to not be the best kept secret in Hollywood.”

So you sort of stepped out of the role of script doctor? Well, you know, because of Robert, I did a lot of book adaptations. I did a book adaptation for Lifetime Television called “Dangerous Evidence: The Lori Jackson Story.” And right after that, I wrote a spec script which was bought by Les Moonves (now President & CEO of CBS TV) then a young hotshot guy at CBS. He turned my feature spec into an MOV called “The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn.” It starred Sydney Poitier, Mary Louise Parker, and Diane Weist. It became one the most watched MOWs in his CBS history. So overnight, I became the MOW king.

So what did you do from there? Well, then 9‑11 happened and people immediately stopped doing MOWs and then reality TV hit. My steady job ‑‑ you know, I wrote probably three MOWs a year — just disappeared. I went from mid‑six figure salary to zero and it was really devastating. My agent at the time kept saying, “Write a spec script for series television.” I was like, “I know nothing about TV.” He said, “Come on – write a spec script for television.” I’d say, “Leave me alone.”

I had just bought a beautiful home in Hancock Park from a woman named Arlene Klasky with whom I’d become friends. She had a company called Klasky‑Csupo that created “Rugrats” and “The Thornberries.” I called and told her I was out of work, but I wanted to write. She said, “Well, come on in. Let’s develop some projects together. So for a few years, Arlene Klasky basically saved my career and kept bread on the table for me and my kids.”

How did you end up in one hour TV dramas from there? Did you finally listen to the agent who told you to write a sample TV script?  Yes, my agent told me to write a one-hour pilot. I asked, “How do you write a one-hour pilot?” We had a long conversation. I got off the phone and I wrote a one-hour pilot. Almost exactly two weeks later, I was sitting in front of David Mamet interviewing for a new show that he had developed with Shawn Ryan (Creator, “The Shield”) called “The Unit.”

No pressure.  Right. I can tell you there are only a couple of times that I nearly lost it in my life and in my career. One time, I bumped into Barbara Streisand. I uttered something nonsensical trying to give her directions because she was lost. The other time was driving across town to Santa Monica to meet David Mamet. I must have gotten lost 16 times. I just wasn’t in my body.

So was that your first job in series television?  Yes. I was with them the entire first season. I had had some success before that. My MOW “The Simple Life of Noah Dearborn” had gotten three Emmy nominations. Mr. Poitier and I won an Image award, too. So I didn’t realize I didn’t know how to write until I met David Mamet. He was amazing, really amazing. He could teach a poodle how to write.  Of course, Shawn was no slouch either.

After the first season, we didn’t know if we were going to get a pickup. I was getting offers. I went to a show called “Heist.” But I think we got canceled on the 8^th or 9^th episode. And from there, I went to “Medium.” In that time I sold probably three pilots, too and also kept getting hired to do features and so I did some rewrites and I think my last official job was to write the script for the remake of the movie SUPER FLY.

So where did the lecturing and the book on writing come in?  Well, while I was on “The Unit,” I got hired to teach a couple of classes. I started teaching screenwriting classes to undergrad and grad students at USC Film School. And it was amazing to me how little they knew. So then I got their reading list, and most of the material was written by failed writers or people who had never actually done it professionally. Ninety percent of them never had any credits, and so they hadn’t been in the writing room. They hadn’t been hired to write a TV show.

So you decided to write a book about what it’s really like to work as a writer in Hollywood.  Exactly. Well, I promised myself to write the book. It took eight or 10 years from that moment to starting to write it.

And so the book came out in September? Have you gotten good feedback?  Yeah, I have had rave reviews.  I have been really lucky. While of course I will not be the last, I am one of the first working writers to write about the experience, to share the knowledge. Screenwriters are so fearful that the next person will take away their job that they don’t share. I just don’t believe that. Two of my students are very hot writers right now. Another student just rocketed to fame. And while none of these people owe me anything, I am very proud that at least I took the time.

I’m looking for a eureka moment, when you realized you did or did want to do something or that you should do something differently.  This is an industry where kindness is sometimes thought of as a weakness. And I’ve had more than half a dozen jobs writing where I got so many notes and I tried to be so accommodating to everyone that the people giving me their notes stopped liking the project. A friend of mine who is a studio executive told me, “In our position, we want somebody to walk in and say, ‘We go that way!’” She was telling me I should fight for my drafts. So there are situations where should have said, “What you have, you like. Stop messing with it.”

Describe a typical workday when you are working on a show?  Well, the last four weeks have involved spending eight to 10 hours a day in the writer’s room working on a white board beating out the A story, B story, C story. Just like when a show is in production. When you’re on a show and your episode is up, it’s like having finals in college. You know, it’s just crazy for two weeks. But when your show is not up, you’re in the writer’s room. You are back in your office. You are working on your next idea or you are helping other people get their shows up.

Worst job (or worst day) in the entertainment industry:  I didn’t perform well on a job I got hired to do by a very high profile writer, producer team. I didn’t show up and I didn’t give it my best. One of producers said, “You are one of the worst writers ever.” That was a bad moment.

Best job or best day in the entertainment industry:  In television, definitely when David Mamet walked up to me at “The Unit”’s Christmas party and said I wrote the best episode of the year. In film, when Sydney Poitier came up to me on the set and said, “So what are you writing next?”

What’s the best thing about being a working writer?  Getting paid to do what you love. 

What about the worst thing about being a working writer?  I think Sue Grafton said it best. She got out of screenwriting because she was tired of making excuses for other people’s bad ideas.

I’m looking for a brush with greatness. It can be a celebrity encounter or just being exposed to someone being brilliant in what they do.  David Mamet telling us, “Don’t turn in anything that you can’t bet your life on.”

What’s the one thing you wish you would have known when you started in entertainment?  That film is a director’s medium and television is the writer’s medium. If someone had told me that when I first started, I would’ve gone straight into television.

I’m looking for the secret of your success and/or what advice you would give to somebody starting out.  Bruce Dern once said that everybody eventually makes it, and it’s true. Everybody does eventually make it, but so many people dabble and drop out. That’s why we have the reputation of this business is so hard. It really isn’t that hard. It’s not harder than going to law school. It’s not harder than going to medical school. It certainly is not harder than being married and no way harder than being a parent.

What is your next move or the next few moves?  I have written screenplays or sold pilots where it went up the chain and people loved it and then it didn’t get made. It just got put away. So the next move for someone like me who has been paid and had a career ‑‑ a fairly successful career for 17 or 18 years as a writer — is to not have that happen. The only way you can do that is to write the book first. You write the book first, and it gets published. It stays there. Whether you get a little royalties or  a lot of royalties, it doesn’t go away. And you can let someone else fail at making the movie.  Or you might get lucky and it will become another “Dexter.”

Click here to check out Sterling Anderson’s book, Beyond Screenwriting: Insider Tips and Career Advice from a Successful TV and Film Writer (affiliate link), or visit his website for more information about his career.

Know anyone who could use an entertainment industry insider? Encourage them to sign up on the YII home page to receive our Mogul Mindset eBlasts today!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The film production supervisor who won’t return your call about available positions?

The agency that sends your screenplay back unread?

The below-the-line agent who never gets around to watching your DP reel?

Here are the things you’ll never know…

The production company receptionist is a frustrated screenwriter herself– and she’s got nineteen phone lines to answer. Plus, Ryan Gosling just walked through the lobby and she didn’t even get to see him.

The supervisor of that film you want to work on is being innundated by calls from the nephew of one of the studio executives and he’ll get the open PA job for sure, even though she can already tell he’s going to be trouble.

The agency that sent your screenplay back unread, like most agencies and production companies and all of the major studios, fears nothing more than being sued because your screenplay bore some resemblance to a project they already have in development. They didn’t even look at the cover page, much less flip it open.

The below-the-line agent who never got around to watching your DP reel? — Oh wait, he just called. He liked your reel and wants to meet in person!

Sometimes people are helpful. Sometimes they are not. When they are not, move on. Don’t take it personally and don’t look back.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Today’s profile subject is a working musician who has played, in the studio and onstage, with some of the top acts of the 70s and 80s up to the present, as well as being in a popular 90s band, Blessid Union of Souls. He’s currently the drummer and 

Hometown:  I was born in Philly, but grew up in Princeton, New Jersey.

Current position/projects:  People would know me most now as the drummer and musical director for Denis Leary’s live band. And then, along with three other people in that band, I’ve got a band called The Liza Colby Sound. I’m drumming. My brother Adam is the guitar player. Alec Morton, formerly of Raging Slab, is our bass player, and Liza is also a backup singer in Denis’s band.

You also score TV shows?  Those things are getting hard and harder to get, but in the last decade, the best gig that I’ve done was scoring a series of claymation cartoons that Sesame Workshop did called “Bert & Ernie’s Great Adventures.” Before that, I scored a Comedy Central show called “Shorties Watchin’ Shorties.” I also did a lot of advertising, including action scoring for Lego games. If it comes up, I do it.

Early love of music/music experience:  Two things come to mind: 1.) When I was a little kid, we lived in a row house in south Philly that had a teensy backyard. Every Saturday, a local funeral home would sponsor a radio show featuring a couple of hours of marching music. I am told my dad would put on the radio and I would use a toy as a conductor’s baton and march around the yard. 2.) Feb 9, 1964 rolled around and my family was gathered around the TV like every other family in America and these four guys came on. Of course, that was the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” I noticed one of these guys was playing something very similar to this stuff I had up in my room. It was an old drum set a guy had given my father. The next day, I put together these drums the way I remembered Ringo had them and I turned on a rock radio station. My dad, who was a very accomplished sax player, ran into the room. I really didn’t know what I was doing, but he was blown away that I was keeping time with the song on the radio with the one drumstick that came with the drums. He went right out and got me a second drumstick. (Laughs.)

College & degree:  My mom decided that I needed a proper liberal arts education so I ended up going to Ithaca College for a couple years. I transferred to Manhattan School of Music, but I left there after one year so I only had three years of school.

First job in the entertainment industry:  I’d been playing gigs since I was ten years old, mostly on drums and bass. But the first “you can now tell people you are in the entertainment industry” job I had was on a sound-alike record, which were made in the 70s to take the current hit sounds to overseas audiences with a native singer, which was very lucrative. I worked at Dynamic Sound as an arranger. I transcribed the charts and recorded them. I was fired when asked for a raise.

What do you consider your big break?  When I was just out of school, maybe 21 years old, I hung out at the legendary Manny’s Music Store in Manhattan. As luck would have it, at the same time I was looking for a job, they had an opening for a drum tech. I was hired for that, but as a teen, I had learned analogue synthesizer technology, which was something very few people knew. I ended up becoming Manny’s first ever synthesizer salesman and used the employee discount to invest in some very expensive synthesizers.

Working there was also a great way to see how the business worked. Everyone came there for their tour gear and all the biggest management companies and every record company in town had accounts with us. It was an amazing experience. And from there, I built a career as a synthesizer session man in New York, which led to gigs with Rick Derringer and Edgar Winter and Ozzy Osborne and some really big time 80s dance music producers and that that lead to the Blessid Union of Souls. So yeah, getting that job at Manny’s was huge.

Career path:  When I first moved to New York, I had been playing bass for low-level dance record sessions. On a couple of dates, I brought along my synthesizer to throw some additional tracks on once the rhythm was down. The engineers would ask me about it. They recognized that I knew how to work the thing. That’s when I found out that doing synthesizer was a real niche and in demand. From that point, I started working my way in.

New York was the capital of advertising then. And I was the little punk rock synth guy playing sessions with the best musicians money could buy that week. It was a head spinning thing to walk into that. That was the early to mid-80s and both the players and the producers were sorting the technology out. The real power brokers in that scene ended up being the engineers because they saw everybody, knew who the good players were, who the nice guys were, who could work fast, and who excelled at one style over the other.

While all that was going on, the remnants of the punk/new wave thing was happening down at CBGBs. Me and my brother Adam, a guitarist, basically lived at CBGBs. We became the go-to people for punk or new wave sessions. We were even brought in to write on other writer’s sessions, to give it the right punk rock flavor.

During that time, there was a great set-up with an agency called Premiere Talent. As soon as they heard your punk rock band was starting to get a name in New York, they would immediately start booking you for dates on Long Island and in New Jersey. Now sometimes you’d be playing for hostile crowds but there was a lot of opportunity. I mean, I opened up for U2’s first tour with a band called Regina and the Red Hots. There was a lot of DIY opportunity. And since it was New York, you could be doing some little thing and if you got the right press, they could be reading about it in Tokyo.

In the early 90s, I had road gigs for Rick Derringer and the Derringer Band. I also had a few months as a ringer, playing keys for Ozzy Osbourne, which was good and bad. I was young enough to think that’s how touring was done all the time when I was being treated to an experience in five star touring. The Derringer Band was an unbelievable players’ gig, though. Most bands were recreating the record onstage each night with everything all planned out around lighting cues, but they were from a boogie woogie background and they played new stuff throughout the concert. They never lost that. I just don’t think you could do better than that unless you’re playing with a guy like Prince.

Where did you go from there?  Eventually, that all fell apart and I went out to Los Angeles for a band in the Black Crowes mode which sort of had a record deal. It never panned out and I came back to New York licking my wounds and thinking it was all over for me at age 33 or 34. And then I went to Cincinnati to do some work for a dance music producing team. I ended up meeting the musicians working in the studio down the hall from them and we formed the Blessid Union of Souls. We were signed by EMI. I played keys and bass and co-produced everything we recorded. When the guy who signed us left the label, our record got put on the shelf for two years, but it was eventually released and did very well. We did two more albums while we were together.

How did you get hooked up with Denis Leary?  My brother met Denis at Emerson college in 1976 and I met him and another friend, a very talented kid named Chris Phillips, when I visited my brother in Boston for the first time. Denis was completely non-stop and hyper but very funny and he won me over. I would sit in on drums for a band my brother was in when I was in town and that’s why, in Denis’s mind, I’m always a drummer first.

So when I got back to New York after Blessid Union, I called on Chris who I knew a lot of people in advertising and at post houses and through him and through Denis’s company, Apostle, I got “Shorties Watchin’ Shorties.” And another one of those advertising connections led directly to the “Bert & Ernie” thing and some “Electric Company” stuff.

In New York right now, there are all of these post houses that used to be jingle houses and they shifted from just creative to one-stop-shopping, with studios, composers, voiceover talent, and players. The post house guys are the new kingmakers in New York and that’s who I send my reel to when I’m looking for work.

Eureka moment (when you realized you did or did not want to do something or that you should do something differently, etc.):  So much of it happens when you are a little kid. When I was a teenager, I played in bands but I never sorted out how bands got to make a record. How did the band get to do this? When I was 13, I found out that a guy who grew up in my town named TJ Tindall, a kid four or five years older than me, that he had gotten a gig playing with The Chambers Brothers. This was a year or so after they released the single, “Time,” which was a huge, huge hit. It blew my brain up to find out that this white kid, someone who walked the same streets that I did growing up, got that gig. That was like, “Oh shit. Now I know it can be done.” Every day after that was different.

What’s the best piece of career advice you ever got?  One of the partners in a jingle company I worked for, a brilliant orchestrator, ended up in an awful divorce. In the mid-80s, I had a session with him on the day they made the whole thing final. He came in in the afternoon and just had this hangdog look on his face. He took one look at my little punk rock ass and said, “Kid, you’re going to make a lot of money in this business. You gotta remember one thing.” I said, “What’s that, Steve?” He said, “It’s only money.” (Laughs.) That was some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten.

Worst job (or day) in entertainment industry:  When something you created hits and then something goes wrong with it, you take it really personally. The worst thing, the thing where I really made my feelings known, was with Blessd Union of Souls. We were scheduled to appear on “Jenny Jones Show.” We were going to do a snippet of our new single and play the bumpers in and out throughout the rest of the show which we thought would be a good opportunity to show off our hits. We got there and they were coaching the guests on the show on how to act like whatever they were supposed to be. In this case, it was women that seemed like strippers learning how to play bad girl high school students. It wasn’t a huge surprise that the show was a sham,
but being there, having to stand there while this show went on and present your music in this forum, was so humiliating. I felt so cheap.

Best job (or day) in entertainment industry:  My best day was with Blessd Union of Souls, too. This was after “She Likes Me for Me” came out in 1999. In 2000 and we got a very high paying gig to play, no joke, a Girl Scout Jamboree in Portland, Oregon. This was a national jamboree, tens of thousands of screaming little girls. The headliner on the gig was The Temptations. There was only one original member left: Otis Williams. We were sharing a sound guy with the Temps. He was a good friend of mine on the road. We get off stage and he has this big smile on his face. And he says that while we were playing, he’d seen Otis come out of the trailer and watch us do a few songs, and then go back into the trailer where everybody was. He said to the band, “Boys, we gotta step it up a notch. They’s entertainers.” He was telling his band to get their shit together. That’s a big deal coming from that guy. I considered it a huge compliment.

Brush with greatness: My biggest brush with greatness was going to John Lennon’s house. In 1978, Yoko Ono had bought John a Yamaha baby grand piano from Manny’s for Christmas. It was a new invention at the time and a couple of days after Christmas, we got a call that there was something wrong with it. I was rolling my eyes when the call came in, thinking, “I’ve sold 50 of these things and of course it would be his.” I got on the phone with his business guy and confirmed that wasn’t something I could walk them through over the phone. They wanted me to come up and I agreed, thinking I was going to be dealing with one of their crew. But the guy said John wanted to be there.

The day of the appointment, I changed my clothes three times before I left the house. I wanted to put on a good impression. My hair was punk rock short and dark purple. And I went up to the Dakota where they lived and the business guy took me up to their apartment. The door opened and John and Yoko were standing there. We made some niceties and then John and I headed down the hall and he started talking as I peeked into each room we passed and tried to remember the details. We had a few minutes of conversation while I was working. He asked me if I was in a band and I told him I’d just joined a punk rock version of the Ronettes called Regina and the Red Hots. He asked me a bunch of questions and I answered them. We talked a lot about synthesizers.

Regina and the Red Hots ended up getting a deal and we were in the studio, at the Record Plant, on December 8, 1980. John and Yoko were down the hall mixing Yoko’s song, “Walking on Thin Ice,” though we didn’t know it at the time. (Note: John Lennon was killed that night outside the Dakota.) We went in the next day and you can imagine what the vibe was. And the studio manager handed me a print out of that day’s studio report, a long sheet of paper, with the four studios and the name of each band and what they needed for that day. I thought that was a beautiful gesture and I still have it.

Next move (or next five moves):  We’re working to develop this Liza Colby Sound band. Liza really is a young Tina Turner. She’s phenomenal. And then I also have a movie deal I can’t talk about yet where I am not only the scoring composure but I’m the musical coach and mentor for a young cast of girls who would actually be playing their own instruments and playing them very well. As soon as we get started and I can talk about it, I’ll call you back and tell you more about it.

Click here to find out more about CP’s band, The Liza Colby Sound and go here to stay up on Denis Leary’s whereabouts so you can see CP in his band.

Know anyone who could use an entertainment industry insider? Encourage them to sign up on the YII home page to receive our Mogul Mindset eBlasts today!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

And yet, they gave the job to someone else.

After all that effort and waiting and wondering. After joking with the receptionist about being a “regular” in the lobby. After establishing what seemed like a genuine rapport with the executive in charge of the department. After what the HR person said about it looking good…

Yes, it’s a disappointment, but in spite of what you might think, all is not lost. What do you do to maximize your chances of having some good come out of this seeming loss?

1)      Be gracious. Yes, you were obviously the best candidate, at least as far as you could tell. And maybe some of the people on the other side of the interview desk thought so, too. But a decision was made, no matter how difficult. And it’s time to touch base one more time with a thank you to all involved for their time and consideration.

2)      Be a resource, if you can. If there’s some topic that was discussed and piece of information that the interviewer wished they had, track it down. If the interviewer wanted to connect with someone who you know, offer to make the introduction. There’s not always an opportunity like this, but if there is, take advantage of it.

3)      Keep the door open. Part of keeping the door open is the thank you and the effort made as a resource. But saying it is important. “If another position comes up – or if the candidate you hired doesn’t work out – I would still love the opportunity to join the team over there.” A sentence like this can cement you in their minds as the backup or as the first person to be called when something else becomes available.

I have personally hired many people who were passed over for the original job they came in for, sometimes for a better position I knew was coming up but couldn’t say anything about. I have also forward resumes of promising candidate to colleagues at other companies for their open positions. Getting the original job is just one good outcome of the job interviewing process. Consider a “near miss” at getting hired one more step in building your reputation for overall career success.

Know anyone who could use an entertainment industry insider? Encourage them to sign up on the YII home page to receive our Mogul Mindset eBlasts today!

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.