First Step: Get Your Foot in the Door

Getting started in Hollywood is all about using your relationships or creating new ones…

Every significant opportunity of mine has come through a relationship I either sought out or happened by chance. Finding these figures to help you is often referred to as having mentors, but that term makes me cringe because it sounds so cheesy, hierarchical, a little too intimate and also limiting because having more than one mentor almost sounds promiscuous. “Mentor” is like having a serious girlfriend…and when you start out in entertainment you can’t be tied down like that, need to play the field and get different points of view & tips.

I prefer the term “supporter” or someone who is available for guidance because it lends itself to a more professional/friendship relationship that can be casual and develops naturally among the multiple people you find yourself having a connection with and trusting across your professional & social life.

To get started building your network of potential supporters, you should comb your existing contacts of professors, friends, family, and co-workers for any people that are connected/have connections to the entertainment business in any facet and pick their brains and learn as much as possible about what they do and let them know what you’re interested in…advice is free and if they like you they’ll go out of their way to call in a favor or make an introduction.

In my case, I got my first job out of college working in the mailroom at Endeavor, because I played basketball in NY with Tom Cavanaugh (yep, “ED” the bowling alley lawyer) and he set me up on an interview with his agent, Brian Swardstrom, a partner at Endeavor at the time…If I had approached him for help because I knew he was an actor I think he’d have been less inclined, but having conversations naturally, eventually my interests came up and he was inclined to offer an intro.

Another example of how you never know which meetings or relationships will lead to opportunities was how I got my next position at CAA…it came shortly after starting at Endeavor through a college buddy of mine who was a mimbo but phenom golfer and said he had a relationship with this old guy from his country club who used to be powerful in Hollywood…and that he could make an intro for me if I was interested in talking to him.

Next thing I know I had the opportunity to have lunch with one of the original founders of CAA. The CAA founder was then semi-retired and significantly aged, but still active in various digital/media investments. I listened closely to everything he had to say and asked questions about how he got started in entertainment and the history of CAA, as well as what I should do/could read to become successful…and not to be mean, because I really admire him and his career, but he kept drooling out the side of his mouth which made me very distracted and almost compelled me to hold my hand out to catch it while he talked…

Anyway, his advice to me was to stay at a smaller agency like Endeavor and be successful and then move over to a larger firm like CAA…but I wasn’t happy at Endeavor because the culture didn’t really suit me (I could be fratty, but they were an annoying, obnoxious kind of fratty) so I emailed the founder that afternoon thanking him for lunch and his advice, but letting him know that I was steadfast in achieving my goal of working at CAA because I wanted to learn from the best…

The next evening I got an email (pasted below), which in a weird coincidence/chance of fate was my last day at Endeavor, because it wasn’t working out on the TV Literary desk I was on and I was unhappy with the people I was working with…

—– Original Message —–
From: “Lovett, Richard”
To: XXXX
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 3:45 PM
Subject: RE: CONFIDENTIAL – Liam Buckley

Dear XXXX,

I hope all is well. As always, I appreciate your support.

We would love to meet with Liam Buckley. I think that the best thing
would be for him simply to call me directly and I will make arrangements
for the correct meetings. He would be meeting with those who run our
training program, which I will explain to him when he calls.

Thanks again and I hope all is well with you.

Richard

—–Original Message—–
From: XXXX
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 10:39 AM
To: Lovett, Richard
Subject: CONFIDENTIAL – Liam Buckley

Dear Richard,

I am sending this to you ‘CONFIDENTIALLY’ as I would respect your
opinion on the best way for me to handle a response to the following ‘e-mail’ from
Liam Buckley.

I had never met Liam Buckley until I had lunch with him yesterday. I had this
lunch because the son of a fellow Bel-Air CC member who I have known for
some time was friends with Liam at the University of Pennsylvania, where
my friend’s son still attends. He asked me if I would please meet Liam and
try to advise him. As I am always willing to mentor young people I agreed
for him to have Liam call me and arrange to meet and talk with him.

I was extremely impressed with Liam and the way he handles himself and
his clear vision as to what he wants for his future. He also has read all the
contemporary books on the agency business and had interned in the summer
at ICM in New York (where he is from) before being introduced to and being
hired by Endeavor. At Endeavor he is an assistant in the Television Literary Department.
His goal is to function as an agent in the MotionPicture Literary Department.

As you can see from the note to me, I encouraged him to stay at Endeavor, as I
thought I could reach agent status more quickly, and then he could explore
approaching CAA. I could tell that he understood CAA and admires and
respects what you do and how you do it, and that is why he wanted to explore it.

While I appreciate his thanks, I frankly did not expect him to bring up
CAA again, but I feel that I need to respond to him. I don’t know if it is
the right thing to do, or if he would want me to contact you this way, but I
was impressed enough with Liam, that I wanted to bring him to your attention.

I would appreciate it if you could ‘e-mail’ me back as how you think
would be the best way for me to respond to Liam at this time. Obviously, I
wouldn’t want to be the one to cause Liam a problem at Endeavor by
letting his interest in moving to CAA become public knowledge, so that is why I
asked for the ‘confidentiality’ between you and me.

I was very impressed to see CAA’s ever expanding list of Emmy nominees…Congratulations.

Warmest personal regards,

XXXX

For those unaware, Richard Lovett is the president of CAA, the top talent & literary agency. Feeling pretty disappointed after leaving Endeavor, seeing the email exchange with the president of CAA couldn’t have come at a better time and made me realize that every meeting and introduction is a potential interview so make the most of those opps.

On the other side, mishandling introductions and opportunities developed through relationships can be very costly and potentially haunting, particularly in entertainment because it’s such a small community….

Regrettably, I have a fitting example here from when I had just started as a floater at CAA.
My sister’s best friend’s boyfriend was in the same fraternity as a young talent agent at the Gersh Agency and he gave me his email which led to an informational breakfast at Nate N’ Al…pretty distant intro…and I found out over breakfast that the agent didn’t even remember who the guy from his fraternity was…

Breakfast went well and the agent had an interesting point of view…he asked me if I wanted to “F*** models and do coke with celebrities” or start earning money to buy a house and have a nice life…it reminded me of the scene in Glengarry Glen Ross with Alec Baldwin because he even pulled his car keys out on the table and said he drove a BMW X5 that “he owned, not leased.”

That Friday I got a call from the agent asking if I’d be interested in working for the head of Motion Pictures at Gersh who he had worked for and was his mentor…I didn’t want to leave CAA but I was excited to take the meeting so agreed to go for breakfast that Sunday at Le Petit Four on Sunset.

Unfortunately, I never made it to breakfast because I partied too hard Saturday night and woke up so hung-over that I called the restaurant to tell the senior agent that I couldn’t make it…but I couldn’t even get him on the phone, the waiter had to tell him…total disaster.

I emailed the agent explaining the situation but lied and said I had a family crisis that prevented me from making the meeting…he never responded and I knew he thought I was full of it.

I found out for sure a few months later when randomly a friend was seated next to him at a dinner party and somehow my name came up…The agent then referred to me as a “douche bag” and proceeded to tell the table the story of my blowing off the breakfast and lying about it.

In this case, I was just starting still so it actually was a great lesson because I’ll never forget how humiliating it was and think that I blew what might have been a long, rewarding relationship with someone successful in the entertainment business. Also, reputation is everything so you can’t afford to have your name tainted, especially when you’re trying to become established.

The ultimate point of these personal examples, is that when getting started you need to leverage every relationship you have and meet with as many people as possible and follow up appropriately and respectfully, because you never know where and when people might help you out or who they know…