Hollywood Carousel

In my last entry for Sheckling magazine I wrote about my first job in Hollywood, a staff comedy writer position at The Best Damn Sports Show Period. Like all things Hollywood, jobs in this town are come and go, and after six months, my first job "went." C’est la vie. Quel dommage. And whatever other French phrases apply when you are unemployed.

But it was a good starter job, and I learned a lot. And since I am now once again in the ranks of those searching for cash-acquiring activities in LA, I have free time to lay out some of what I learned so maybe it will help others out there who are searching for their first job.

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The first thing I learned is that Hollywood is an unstable entity, always fluid, never really predictable or settled for long. Which is good because there are always opportunities bubbling up, and bad because opportunities you’ve procured suddenly disappear.

In my particular circumstance, what happened is that just after I got the job at the show, FoxSports.Net underwent a regime change. Certain high level executives were expunged, others brought in. When this happens, new execs want to bandy their new power and set a tone that they are not to be trifled with, and that they will turn a profit. So Best Damn-- the flagship show for FoxSports.Net-- was forced to show new execs it could make money. Budgets shrank, workloads went up, morale plummeted, and jobs from every department were cut. The writing staff lost two positions. It went from six spots to four (even though one spot had been vacant forever), and since I was the last hired, I lived the cliché of being first fired. Ah, well, that’s the game we’ve chosen. We must deal, sons and daughters of comedy.

Second, and more importantly, I learned that I like writing television. Television has a nice energy to it. It’s got a lot of frustration and biting your tongue built into it as well, but overall I really liked the activity of writing comedy that suddenly appears before your very eyes on television. I liked getting to drive on onto a studio lot every day. I liked working in professional environment flavored by an air of comedy. And I especially liked writing on a staff with a range of other comics and comic writers. It’s fun to get to know other comic minds, learn from them, get to joke around with them, and create relationships that go beyond just the job at hand.

Third, I learned I can write television. I wrote jokes, sketches, props, photo docs, monologues, off-the-cuff remarks, and all that stuff got laughs. As a standup on the outside of TV you think you can write stuff that will work on the tiny screen, but you’re never sure. You think you know humor, but you don’t know if maybe the guys inside the industry are just so talented that they’ll blow you out of the water once you get in the room with them. Well, I can attest that if you’re a good standup, your sense of humor will stand the test of television writing. No one knows humor better than standups. No one is as cutting edge, no one understands the audience, no one knows the microscopic nuances and structures that make humor work as well as standups know it. End of mystery.

Fourth, and most importantly of all, I learned that even though I know humor, I had/have a ton to learn about how humor works on television. There is so much going on behind the scenes, from producing to management to budgeting to acting to editing to legal to script changes to direction to things you could never even think of that somehow become absolutely essential to making your idea work. And you truly need some knowledge of all of it so you can shepherd your stuff from idea into televised reality without it getting fatally altered along the way.

The basic lesson is that you need to learn television just like you learned how to do cruddy one-nighters and A-rooms. And the only way to learn television is the same way to learn standup: you have to get direct experience. If you want to be a writer in Hollywood, you have to somehow get on a television show and soak stuff up like an alcoholic sponge. If that means taking an unpaid internship, fine. If it means working cheap as an assistant, fine. I was lucky in that my first job was as a writer. But if I can’t find another writer position soon I’ll be more than willing to take a different job on a show-- assistant, accountant, whatever I can weasel into. It’s impossible to learn too much in television, and the only way to learn it is to be there, up close, day after day, doing it. No matter what level you start at, you’ll move up if you’re there learning and doing good work.

Fifth, and finally, I learned that although TV looks simple when you’re out there watching it, believe me, it’s incredibly complicated putting it together. There are politics to negotiate, people to please, people to keep away. There are ideas flying at you from every angle. There are incompetent people and incredibly talented people, all mixed together. You have to carve out your own style and your own space, or you’ll get swallowed alive. And there are two hundred people waiting to take your place if you do get swallowed, and hardly anyone is willing or able to take the time to slow down and hold your hand while you get your feet wet, so get ready to hit the ground running, my friend.

So all in all I guess I would summarize my first job by saying if you’re thinking about writing for television, it’s not impossible. It’s even fun. But it’s hard work, it’s unstable work, and it can be maddening work.

And now I have to go look for more of it.