Everything you need to know about climbing the Hollywood ladder. These are hard-earned lessons from my time in the trenches, from landing my first internship, paying dues as a Hollywood assistant, to working on pitches for HBO, Showtime, and Hulu.
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The Essential
If you’re planning on breaking into Hollywood, read these posts first.
- What I Learned After 7 Years Of Working For Free. The foundation of my Hollywood career was built around free work. Here’s how I did it.
- The Truth About Being a Hollywood Assistant: My Time Working for Dennis Lehane. An honest behind the scenes look at how I landed my writer’s assistant gig and what it was like.
- How to Turn Your Hollywood Internship into a Job. There are 4 strategies that you can use to turn your Hollywood internship into a job.
- How to Land Your First Hollywood Job. When it comes to landing your first Hollywood job, don’t bother with low-hanging fruit (job lists and company sites). Focus on uncrowded channels, do deep research, and look to go direct.
- Should You Be a Showrunner’s Assistant or a Writer’s Assistant? What were the pros and cons of being a Showrunner’s Assistant vs. a Writer’s Assistant? Which is better suited for your skill sets, and the trajectory of your career?
- 27 Rules of Hollywood Networking. How do you start building connections? The answer, in a nutshell: Drink with as many people as you can. Let’s look at some of my favorite rules to do just that and build your Hollywood network.
How Television Works
Everything you want to know about the machinations of the television industry, co-written with Alex Harvey-Gurr.
- What You Need to Know About Pilot Season. Pilot season is the busiest season in the television industry, something which the general public doesn’t see. This timeline breaks down everything you need to know about pilot season.
- How Television Pilots Are Made. Learn the process of creating a television pilot, from pitch to final cut.
- How Many TV Pilots Get Ordered Each Season. Millions are spent on a single pilot, but how many come to fruition and make it on air? We’ll break down the numbers and look at future trends.
- An Industry of Failure: How Your TV Show Can Fail (and Why You Shouldn’t Be Worried). Failure is the norm in the television industry, with over 90% of all shows failing. This outlines the three main ways that series fail before making it on air.
- Straight-to-Series: The Pilot-Free Way of Making Television. Straight-to-series orders are becoming more prevalent in wake of the success of shows like Netflix’s HOUSE OF CARDS, with the Big Four committing to 15 of these projects between them.
- The Kings of Television: Creatives and How They’re Packaged. Creatives, i.e. writers, actors, directors, and producers, are the primary driving force behind the television industry, both in terms of content creation and getting series greenlit. This outlines the different types of talent you’ll see in television.
- How Do You Write for TV? Lots of people move to Hollywood hoping to write for television, but not many know how. This outlines the different things aspiring television writers can do to break into the TV industry.
- How Staffed Television Writers Land and Keep Their Jobs. Even though it is difficult to break into Hollywood as a TV writer, there are many writers who’ve done just that. This article outlines how these writers got hired/staffed on their shows, and what their workdays look like.
- Inside the Writers’ Room. TV writers understand there’s a hierarchy in the writer’s room and they have to work up the ranks. This post outlines the hierarchy and the different duties each position performs.
- Showrunners: The CEOs of Television. The showrunner is the CEO of the show, and they’re placed in charge of what is essentially a mid-level company. Here we explain the responsibilities they carry.
- Why Actors Are Switching from Film to TV. Actors are literally the faces of film and television. In the old days, the talent would transition to film after making a name for themselves on television, but now the opposite is starting to happen. Let’s look at why.
- Why Movie Directors Are Starting to Direct Television. Big name movie directors are working on television shows, either by directing pilots on a one-time basis or attaching themselves to series. This article discusses some of the reasons behind why this shift.
- Notes from The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies. “The stunning metamorphosis of twenty-first-century Hollywood and what lies ahead for the art and commerce of film.”
- How Hollywood Can Save Itself. Is the traditional Hollywood business model broken? Yes, but not due to sequels, Rotten Tomatoes, or crappy executives. There are at least three powerful threats that changed the Hollywood business model.
- The End of The Golden Age of Television and Why Content is No Longer King. Cable television’s loss of market share and the end of the “Third Golden Age of Television” was a strategic blunder, not a creative one.