It turns out that I got hired at the Store, which at the time was a huge relief, though I didn’t truly expect to stay there as long as I have. I expected the job to tide me over while I found something more permanent, but it has instead become my safe harbor. I have followed a few uncharted routes in search of more stable employment and each has failed, and the Store has always welcomed me back with a few extra hours when I returned, my ship empty and my sails limp. I am still only a part-time hire, but I am carefully carving a niche for myself and hope to drop anchor someday soon.
I’m sure you’d like to know where all the nautical metaphors are coming from. Well, friends, it’s all due to my very nautical Sperry Topsiders. The best shoe I ever bought.
If my random jobs so far have anything in common, it’s the fact that each has a strict and very different dress code. The Store requires their female sales associates to wear a blazer or cardigan with jeans or a knit top, for example, along with leather shoes. The shoes may be sandals, but they have to be leather sandals with a leather outsole. Leather-soled sandals typically have absolutely no padding whatsoever. And as for shoes, clogs are not allowed. In short, good luck finding anything that fits dress code and isn’t going to stab your feet and lumbar with cruelly fashionable knives. I suppose I should be grateful that my socks are not under daily inspection, but still. It is damn hard to find work shoes.
Or it would be, had I not bought the best shoes ever, months before, without any inkling of how fantastic they truly were.
For some reason, the undergraduate University students where I earned my graduate degree all loved Sperry Topsiders. I don’t know why, but every damn one of those girls wore their boat shoes with the ubiquitous Nike Tempo Track running short. I still don’t understand how twenty thousand undergrads all decided to wear the same running short and the same shoes, but they did. I’m guessing they were all mind-controlled by their sororities. Being the rugged, Thoreau-reading individualist that I am, I own both the running short and the boat shoes, but I never ever wear them together.
The running short makes sense. I like to run. And the fabric does wick away moisture. But the boat shoes didn’t make any sense. I saw people wearing them, and knew by some sort of sartorial instinct that they were called boat shoes. It took a google search or two to determine that the brand name was Sperry Topsider. I didn’t need a pair of boat shoes, but they called to me. And when I came across them on the cheap at a factory outlet, there was nothing left to do but buy them.
I didn’t wear them much until I started working at the Store. But when I was going through the closet last October, culling my work-worthy pieces, I realized that I had in my keeping the secret weapon of work-appropriate footwear. Lightweight, well-padded, leather, the Sperry’s had it all. But best of all, Sperry owns the preppy, east-coast sporty niche that the Store tries to claim for itself. They’re more Store than the Store itself.
I don’t know if I have the undergraduates of the University to thank for the perfect appurtenance, or if my feet know more about my life than I do, or if it was pure silly chance. But Sperry Topsiders were the perfect fit, even though I didn’t know it when I bought them.
But sometimes, wise choices in footwear can be made by design.
You may recall that I was required to wear black shoes when I did valet. However, you may not recall this, since I spoke mostly, when it came to footwear, of my socks. Nevertheless, I also noted that black shoes were required when I sold concessions at Dodger Stadium. I did not wear my sexy black heels, nor my sensible black ballet flats, of course, though these are both shoes that many women have on hand. Nor were they boring old black sneakers like my mom’s Reebok aerobics shoes. No sir. They were Pumas. A sleek, stylish martial arts-inspired design, and solid black. Because I sell concessions like a ninja.
These shoes were a deliberately wise choice. But, luckily for my pocketbook and my story, they were also a frugal choice made as a result of yet another odd job.
A producer at one of my internships during the summer referred me to one of her friends, who needed people to help with what was essentially a garage sale. But not just a regular garage sale, a super-special West Hollywood garage sale. The woman I was helping out was some sort of celebrity stylist or closet organizer, and she basically ran quarterly garage sales to help her clients get rid of their unbelievably expensive, often unworn, almost always ugly clothing and accessories.
Most of what was for sale was stored in bins, on racks, or in trash bags in the garage of a West Hollywood house. We set about emptying all this out into the driveway where it could be shopped. I was responsible for the handbag table and emptied several trash bags of purses out onto the table. Later, I lined up row after row of shoes on the floor of the garage.
The back porch of the house served as a fitting room for this event. So women would show up, grab handfuls of designer threads that were fresh out of a trash bag, try them on in some stranger’s back yard, and then pay thousands of dollars for the stuff they felt they needed. These women thought they were spending wisely. They were getting a great deal. “That’s a fantastic piece,” they would say. This was the day I would learn that if you want to sound like you know what you’re talking about when it comes to fashion, it’s not a dress or a belt or a $500 screen printed tee shirt. It’s a piece. What a find. That’s a great piece.
This was without a doubt one of the strangest days I have spent in Los Angeles.
When I was hired for this gig, my producer friend told me that her friend would give me a huge discount on anything I wanted to buy, and would pay me for my work in credit against any of my purchases. The theory was that I could get something like an exclusive $1500 Prada bag, which was priced at only $500 at the sale, discounted by 50% to only $250, minus the money I would have earned, leaving me with only $150 to pay. That’s a savings of 90%. Which means absolutely nothing if you have no need of an exclusive Prada bag.
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that The Careerist does not like to put in a days work and leave a great deal poorer. I planned to take my earnings in cash.
But I would be lying if I said there weren’t some shoes I wanted. Some, I even dared to try on. There was this one pair of boots, the leather was like creamery butter…but this is a story about a different pair of shoes.
There was a pair of black Pumas in a size seven that no one but I gave a second look. But I knew that they might come in handy. I had a friend when I was in film marketing who wore a pair of those to red carpet events with very long black pants. No one noticed she was wearing sneakers, and her feet weren’t bleeding at the end of the night. I was always jealous of her clever black Pumas.
These shoes were stealthy smart. I could tell. So I bought them for ten bucks. I told the woman I was working for that they would come in handy if I ended up waitressing, forgetting for the moment that I wouldn’t know that since I’m the only American woman alive without waitressing experience. Meanwhile, I went home with another ninety in cash.
These $10 shoes have earned me about $700 since, and there’s still a lot of baseball to play. And besides that, if I hadn’t done the valet parking, I never would have applied at the Store. And my poor Sperry Topsiders would still be in the back of the closet, all lonely-like and sad.
Does the purchase of a pair of sneakers at a garage sale determine a path, however winding, that a pair of feet may walk? Or am I just a writer looking for a story? You tell me. But I know that I’m glad I’ve got the right shoes for walking these miles.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Monday, August 3, 2009
Mitigating Risk
I took a producing class when I was in film school, hoping to gain some insight into the industry while I concurrently worked to improve my craft. One of the most basic of these insights was the concept of “mitigating risk.”
Producing a film is an incredibly risky endeavor. If I were to independently produce a film and wanted you to help me pay for it, I would bring you a business prospectus that offers you a share in the film’s profits in exchange for your cash to spend making it. By law, my business prospectus would require a page that warns you that you will probably never see your money ever again. As far as investments go, making a film is just about the stupidest thing you could ever do with your money.
It’s very difficult to make a film. And expensive. And even if you succeed in completing the project, you still have to spend about $30 million to create enough copies of the film to go around the country and play on thousands of screens and to buy enough advertising to actually get butts into multiplex seats. (These two expenses are called P & A, Prints and Advertising.)
Nevertheless, films get made every year. Somebody somewhere must be willing to risk some money. They are either incredibly foolish, or somebody somewhere else is somehow mitigating the risk.
There are very few ways to make sure people are going to see a movie. One way is to hire a famous movie star. Another way is to release the movie on a day when people are likely to go to the movies and won’t have much besides your movie to choose from. But the most popular method of mitigating risk in the film industry is to take a concept, character, or story that already has the attention of the audience and make a movie around it.
This could be an adaptation of a famous novel or comic. Or it could be a sequel to an already successful movie, or a remake of an already successful movie. Sometimes, it could just be an idea based on history, legend, or familiar myth. If you can write a film that is based on something else, you’re already in better shape than someone who came up with a brand new idea. (Not that there is any such thing, since there’s nothing new under the sun. But you get my drift.)
Take The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Sequels mitigate risk. Films based on pre-existing concepts, such as a theme-park ride, also mitigate risk. Theme-park rides already owned by the production and distribution company don’t have to be optioned, which saves money. And lastly, the ride itself was an attractive portrayal of the bacchanalian lifestyle of the eighteenth century pirate, a familiar and iconic concept in itself. Which mitigates risk.
This film grossed over $1 billion worldwide, which surprises no one.
Many people bemoan the lack of original stories in contemporary commercial cinema and claim that Hollywood is out of new ideas. That’s idiotic. There are thousands of new ideas every day, and hundreds of good original scripts get read by producers every year. Some production companies compile lists of the best scripts that circulate the industry every year, and every year new writers win awards and fellowships with their expertly crafted original work. Hollywood is like a giant anthill full of busy little workers who are building beautiful, delicate, nuanced stories that will win them acclaim and a career of inspiring work. (Do I flatter myself that I am one of these industrious little bodies? Absolutely. If you don’t think I should give myself such credit, you can kiss my ass.) But those scripts very rarely get made. They’re too risky. Instead, those scripts will get the writer work on some other film that is an adaptation of last year’s bestseller, or a sequel to a comic book adaptation, or a remake of a half-remembered comedy from the fifties.
Another of my college professors had his own spin on the risk mitigation theory. He would say, “everyone in Hollywood wants to be second, but no one wants to be first.” For instance, one writer I know reported that producers these days will look at a well-crafted script with perfect three-act structure and ask the writer if there’s any way he can make it non-linear. Because people like those non-linear stories nowadays. These are the same douchebags who passed on Memento ten years ago. They’re happy to tag along, but have no desire to do anything ground-breaking…or risky.
In looking over the latest UTA list, I once again felt hopelessness descend each time I read an ad for a job that required one to two years of experience. (Agency preferred, of course.) And it occurred to me that the people doing the hiring are all just afraid. They want to be the second to take a risk on me, but not the first. Without a year of experience at some other company, no one has any way to mitigate their risk in hiring me.
I understood when I decided to try my hand as a screenwriter that I would probably not get my original stories made into movies. I understood that it would be too risky, that it would be reasonable for a producer to fear such a risk. And I thought I understood that it would be hard to find work without lots of contacts, but I figured that I could make contacts as I went along. But now I understand that the fear of loss and the fear of risk have trickled down to the very least of every decision made by any industry executive. It isn’t just about wasting millions of dollars on the wrong film. It’s also about wasting a few weeks on the wrong assistant. I now know that I can’t get a job because everyone in this industry is too afraid to hire me as the front office receptionist. I’m a risk. And even the smallest risk is terrifying.
I’m a little bit discouraged by the fact that I am trying to be a part of a business that is governed by fear, but I am doing my best not to be afraid. Somebody somewhere will eventually decide to take a risk on me. After all, someone in Hollywood eventually has to be first, so that everyone else can clamor to be second. It's just a matter of time. I hope.
I don't fear.
Producing a film is an incredibly risky endeavor. If I were to independently produce a film and wanted you to help me pay for it, I would bring you a business prospectus that offers you a share in the film’s profits in exchange for your cash to spend making it. By law, my business prospectus would require a page that warns you that you will probably never see your money ever again. As far as investments go, making a film is just about the stupidest thing you could ever do with your money.
It’s very difficult to make a film. And expensive. And even if you succeed in completing the project, you still have to spend about $30 million to create enough copies of the film to go around the country and play on thousands of screens and to buy enough advertising to actually get butts into multiplex seats. (These two expenses are called P & A, Prints and Advertising.)
Nevertheless, films get made every year. Somebody somewhere must be willing to risk some money. They are either incredibly foolish, or somebody somewhere else is somehow mitigating the risk.
There are very few ways to make sure people are going to see a movie. One way is to hire a famous movie star. Another way is to release the movie on a day when people are likely to go to the movies and won’t have much besides your movie to choose from. But the most popular method of mitigating risk in the film industry is to take a concept, character, or story that already has the attention of the audience and make a movie around it.
This could be an adaptation of a famous novel or comic. Or it could be a sequel to an already successful movie, or a remake of an already successful movie. Sometimes, it could just be an idea based on history, legend, or familiar myth. If you can write a film that is based on something else, you’re already in better shape than someone who came up with a brand new idea. (Not that there is any such thing, since there’s nothing new under the sun. But you get my drift.)
Take The Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Sequels mitigate risk. Films based on pre-existing concepts, such as a theme-park ride, also mitigate risk. Theme-park rides already owned by the production and distribution company don’t have to be optioned, which saves money. And lastly, the ride itself was an attractive portrayal of the bacchanalian lifestyle of the eighteenth century pirate, a familiar and iconic concept in itself. Which mitigates risk.
This film grossed over $1 billion worldwide, which surprises no one.
Many people bemoan the lack of original stories in contemporary commercial cinema and claim that Hollywood is out of new ideas. That’s idiotic. There are thousands of new ideas every day, and hundreds of good original scripts get read by producers every year. Some production companies compile lists of the best scripts that circulate the industry every year, and every year new writers win awards and fellowships with their expertly crafted original work. Hollywood is like a giant anthill full of busy little workers who are building beautiful, delicate, nuanced stories that will win them acclaim and a career of inspiring work. (Do I flatter myself that I am one of these industrious little bodies? Absolutely. If you don’t think I should give myself such credit, you can kiss my ass.) But those scripts very rarely get made. They’re too risky. Instead, those scripts will get the writer work on some other film that is an adaptation of last year’s bestseller, or a sequel to a comic book adaptation, or a remake of a half-remembered comedy from the fifties.
Another of my college professors had his own spin on the risk mitigation theory. He would say, “everyone in Hollywood wants to be second, but no one wants to be first.” For instance, one writer I know reported that producers these days will look at a well-crafted script with perfect three-act structure and ask the writer if there’s any way he can make it non-linear. Because people like those non-linear stories nowadays. These are the same douchebags who passed on Memento ten years ago. They’re happy to tag along, but have no desire to do anything ground-breaking…or risky.
In looking over the latest UTA list, I once again felt hopelessness descend each time I read an ad for a job that required one to two years of experience. (Agency preferred, of course.) And it occurred to me that the people doing the hiring are all just afraid. They want to be the second to take a risk on me, but not the first. Without a year of experience at some other company, no one has any way to mitigate their risk in hiring me.
I understood when I decided to try my hand as a screenwriter that I would probably not get my original stories made into movies. I understood that it would be too risky, that it would be reasonable for a producer to fear such a risk. And I thought I understood that it would be hard to find work without lots of contacts, but I figured that I could make contacts as I went along. But now I understand that the fear of loss and the fear of risk have trickled down to the very least of every decision made by any industry executive. It isn’t just about wasting millions of dollars on the wrong film. It’s also about wasting a few weeks on the wrong assistant. I now know that I can’t get a job because everyone in this industry is too afraid to hire me as the front office receptionist. I’m a risk. And even the smallest risk is terrifying.
I’m a little bit discouraged by the fact that I am trying to be a part of a business that is governed by fear, but I am doing my best not to be afraid. Somebody somewhere will eventually decide to take a risk on me. After all, someone in Hollywood eventually has to be first, so that everyone else can clamor to be second. It's just a matter of time. I hope.
I don't fear.
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