To: p_stack@yahoo.com, patrick stack <pjs@outofpocketfilms.com>
Hi, Pat-
Here's a rough draft of the summary portion of the proposal. I'm going to go through and snap it up a little bit as far as the language goes, but let me know what you think of it in general, and if there's anything you particularly like or dislike, anything that should be emphasized, etc. Also, if you've thought of any additional anecdotes or tips, send those along so that we can have the best ones possible at our disposal for this section. I'm finishing up the other, shorter sections today (competition, author, etc.) and will send you those later on.
Thanks,
Barrett Brown Brooklyn, NY 512-560-2302
Show business has always been something of a mystical
profession. This was especially true in the beginning, when the art of
acting first developed out of Greek choruses assembled to sing the
praises of the god Dionysus. That's about as mystical you can get. When
directors hit upon the idea of having a chorus member actually proclaim
to be Dionysus, the concept was sufficiently novel to capture
the imaginations of the whole of Greece, for whom the theater quickly
emerged as the most important artistic product of a society already
steeped in cultural innovation. At the same time, it was also
unprecedented enough to evoke distrust and even downright scorn towards
the actors themselves. Who, they asked, were these lowly crooners to
swipe the identity of a hero, a king, or even the gods themselves?
Though their status has improved a bit, film industry folks can still
run into contempt in our era, such as when finding themselves cast as
an extra in a poorly-conceived sitcom or being Michael Bay. And though
the profession is still as mysterious as ever, the intrigue is no
theological; the big mystery today is not, "What becomes of the man who
takes on the attributes of the immortal?", but rather, "How do I get
work?" This latter question wasn't as important back in the 4th century
B.C. when actors tended to be actual slaves without a lot of creative
control over their careers, much less a desire to someday direct.
Today, it's the most important question an actor can ask himself - but
a surprising number of actors simply don't bother.
The
business end of acting is only mysterious to those who approach the
matter without context. The underlying problem is that actors often
look at acting in a vacuum, as a sort of extra-dimensional profession
unconnected to mundane, lesser pursuits like working at a grocery store
or producing films. Actors who view acting without a reference point
are depriving themselves of the sort of insight into the clearly
crucial pursuit of actually, you know, getting work. What they should
be doing is thinking of acting as a business - more specifically, the
business of sales.
I've spent my professional life riding an
unusual career arc, although things started out normally enough, at
least for an actor; I got into the discipline in college, struggled in
the usual manner, and eventually started landing some roles. The work
came in an amusingly wide variety. On the one hand, I played Lieutenant
Morgan in Rambo: First Blood; on the other hand, I wrote comedy with
then-roommate Nathan Lane. On the third hand (I'm deformed), I appeared
on television shows ranging from Dynasty to Cheers, and had the great
pleasure of working on the stage as well. But after about a decade of
financial uncertainty, it occurred to me that I wanted to raise a
family - and it also occurred to me that I didn't want to do all of
this family-raising out of the backseat of a Volvo. Being broke is a
virtue when you're young and single but it's a crime when kids come
into the picture. So I bit the bullet and got a real job.
My friends steered me towards sales. After all, I'd suffered through
rejection after rejection as an actor, thereby hardening myself in
advance to the rejection after rejection I'd be suffering through as a
salesman. In fact, I was to find that the respective skill sets of
acting and sales tended to overlap not just a little, but a lot.
When I went in for my first interviews with the sales departments of
various magazines, I was always asked why I should be hired on despite
having no experience in salesmanship as such. "But I've always been a
salesman," I explained. "And I've been selling the most difficult
product of all - myself." This usually got a laugh and a nod, and
occasionally got me a job as well. But that was just a cute line
intended to break the ice; I didn't really believe it myself at the
time. An actor is an actor, I thought, and a salesman is a salesman.
Soon after I started selling, though, I began to realize that I had
accidentally told the truth - acting and selling are very much one in
the same, and so understanding either profession can help one to excel
in the other. As I started to apply what I'd learned in acting to
sales, things began to take off. I started off as an account executive
at Advertising Age, where to my great surprise I managed to
"make my numbers" quarter after quarter - pretty good, I thought, for a
guy who had never used a fax machine before. Later I found myself
working as the vice president of sales at a California firm that
specialized in interactive marketing programs for Fortune 500
companies; again, what I'd learned as an actor was instrumental to my
success. Among our first clients was Yahoo; I sold the company's first
ads in 1995. A few years later, when the iconic young firm had
established its own sales department, I was asked to come on board and
direct its southwest U.S. territory, managing a 20-employee office in
Los Angeles and overseeing new business. Between stock and salary, I
had made myself a nice chunk of assets by 2000, at which point I
decided to take some time off. By 2002, I had gone back into
entertainment, this time as a producer - and equipped with a better
understanding of the entertainment industry than I could have ever
hoped to acquire had I never left entertainment in the first place.
***
The purpose of this book is to get actors to re-think the business of acting as a business that involves acting.
Actors, like all creative types, don't want to think of themselves as
salespeople. Perhaps they want to appear in a production of Glenn
Garry-Glen Ross or play Willie Loman on the stage, but portraying a
salesman is the closest that most of them generally want to get to
actually selling something. Many of them see salespeople as alien to
art - as shifty, snake oil-selling ne'er-do-wells clad in flashy
clothes and too much cologne. Most actors would be reluctant to
associate their own pursuit of the role with the salesman's pursuit of
the close. And it's the reluctance to make the comparison that prevents
them from gaining crucial insight into how they can make the sort of
moves necessary to land the gigs they want.
It's called show business for
a reason. It's a world rife with politics, personalities, rules,
procedures, and great expectations, which is why this book will provide
the actor with a guide to thriving in such a scene by reworking into a
salesroom. The intention is to give readers a new and better
understanding of how they can succeed in such an ultra-competitive
environment as this by applying the lessons I and others have learned
in another ultra-competitive environment - one in which the product
isn't being offered just a couple of times a week at casting calls, but
a hundred times a day in sales calls. Just as a long-distance runner
will train at high altitudes before running the race in an easier, more
oxygen-rich environment, inculcating himself with the insight gleaned
from high-stress sales work will give the actor a comparable advantage
in his bid for gigs. Just to be clear, my book doesn't require any
actual running.
Many of the strategies detailed here derive
in part from the sales principles are taught in Fortune 1000 conference
rooms and weekend seminars, reworked to address the unique requirements
of the acting trade. Rather than useless generalities or motivational
tips hammered into goofy acronyms, these are applicable techniques that
address specific challenges of the sort encountered by both experienced
thespians and part-type neophytes. But some of the most useful material
will stem from my own experiences as an actor and producer, as well as
the experiences of others in the profession; several chapters will
include conversations with an array of industry veterans with whom I've
worked in the past, including Brian Dennehy, Nathan Lane, Jason Lee,
Kathy Baker, and Gregory Garcia, as well as a couple of producers and
others with special knowledge of the in's and out's of getting in
without being thrown out.
Between a dozen actors and
producers, we can probably expect one or two good pieces of advice to
come up. Just to be on the safe side, I've composed a few in advance.
There is, for instance, the classic admonition to know one's customer.
This is something of a trope among even the greenest of salesmen, but a
surprising number of actors pay it no attention whatsoever. That's a
shame, because in neglecting to do their homework prior to a meeting,
an actor has already begun to sabotage himself before he even arrives.
And it costs very little in time and effort to pull off this kind of
research. You can learn a lot simply by asking who will be in a room,
for instance; you can learn even more by looking up those people's
names on IMDB. When you've bothered to determine someone's body of work
and thereby get a sense of what sort of angle will interest that
person, how that person approaches a project, and how that person's
last name is pronounced, you've vastly improved your chances of being
able to deliver what's desired. And when you put all of this
information together and use it to work out the likely dynamic you'll
face in a room - the pre-existing relationships, the differences in
creative direction, the collective intent of the team with regards to
what that finished product is supposed to be - you've gained an
additional edge over a competitor who walks into that same room without
a clue as to how to proceed.
Related yet still distinct is
the "game plan," which in the context of acting involves the
development of a strategy by which to get yourself or your project in
front of the right person rather than having it tossed aside by the
wrong one. Within the unique bureaucracy of entertainment, one
encounters both gates and gatekeepers. Some of these lead to the guy in
charge; others lead to would-be players without any real access or
capabilities of their own. Being able to identify the real decision
makers is imperative; it can also be unusually tricky in this industry,
in which image and actuality tend to coincide even less than they do in
more traditional business settings. Once an actor has identified the
right people and coupled this knowledge with the right research, the
next step is to adapt the right approach - the process by which the
actor makes contact with whoever has a finger on the green button. This
requires you to know how to deal with the gatekeepers; to engage with
the entry level-types to the extent that such engagement works to one's
advantage, and only to that extent; to determine an organization's
actual hierarchy rather than its official one; and to otherwise do the
sort of research, planning, and execution that is almost routine among
the nation's top salespeople but which is nonetheless commonly
neglected among those who are selling themselves.
Equally
important to understand (and more fun to read about) are the mistakes
that actors and other entertainment professionals regularly make when
running amok in the business end of art. The problem that tends to come
to mind for myself and many other producers is that particular brand of
entitlement which seems to be unique to actors though certainly not
universal among them). When approaching someone who's in a position to
hire or otherwise advance a career, the actor's frame of mind is too
often along the lines of, "What can this person do for me?" This tends
to come through without the actor even realizing it, and it makes a
terrible impression. This is not to say that it hurts the producer's
feelings or that he's expecting you to show up for purely altruistic
reasons; rather, it's simply a wasted opportunity whereby the actor
could have raised his value in the eyes of whoever is doing the hiring.
The theme of an actor's discussion with any producer or casting
director should always be, "Here's how I can make your life easier."
And there are a variety of methods by which to make that case, both
explicitly and implicitly. A few anecdotes are probably in order. They always are. My
brother Tim managed to sell a show to FX by way of a rather
unconventional approach, and did this by adhering to several of the
principles that will be detailed in this book. Years back, he bartended
a Christmas party put on by Don Buckwald, a New York-based agent who
himself was on the rise. Tim stayed in touch afterwards, occasionally
reaching out to Don in order to let him know what he was up to. When
Don landed Howard Stern as a client, Tim was ready. Upon learning that
Stern was looking for a television concept to develop and produce, Tim
went to New York and sold the show right there in the room. Tim knew
the right gatekeeper, Buchwald, through which he had access to the real
decision maker, Stern. And he was able to acquire and maintain those
relationships by knowing when to approach, when to pursue, and when to
wait.
Early on in my sales career, we were looking for a
keynote speaker for our conference on interactive marketing, a
semi-annual affair catering to high-end sales and marketing execs with
an itch to learn about the mysterious new world of internet
advertising. Time was running out and we had yet to secure our "big
deal" speaker. I had read in the Wall Street Journal that the
number two guy at Procter & Gamble was developing an interest in
the general subject, making him a prime contender to headline our
intent. Rather than waste time trying to get through the chain of
command at P&G, I wrote to him directly and received a note in
reply. He had to decline to a scheduling conflict, but said he would
have been delighted otherwise. I made a mental note to always start
from the top and work down; it's the best way to generate contacts.
***
Acting is one of the most rewarding pursuits imaginable, and actors
have good reason to think highly of the skill sets they develop in the
process. Too often, though, they insulate themselves from the practical
aspects of the trade, which in turn prevents them from maximizing their
opportunities to ply their craft. Contacts matter. Approach matters.
Timing matters most of all. And in these and other aspects of getting
what one wants, the world's businessmen in general and
salespeople in particular have pioneered their own artistic pursuit -
that of the interpersonal wonk. This was very nice of them, as we can
now take the end result of some hundred years of research into the art
of the deal and apply these same principles to the business of acting,
an industry in which many participants give little or no consideration
to the strategies that can mean the difference between landing a
career-defining role and working another five years as a bartender on
the side. Those actors who learn and practice the tactics described in
this book, then, will gain considerable advantage over their
competitors in one of the most competitive fields imaginable.