One of our members stepped outside himself recently and met with a friend’s manager on the suggestion of his friend. He figured, “How could it hurt?”. Well, let’s see how…
I have recently dealt with my own age-related experience. A friend of mine offered to refer me to his manager. Figured it couldn’t hurt. I wasn’t specifically looking, but I don’t turn down potential relationships.
I heard back the next week that his manager passed on it, claiming ” I was too old with too few credits on my resume.”
I’m 38.
I can take that a couple of ways. Either I am truly too old to have so few credits, or I can remember that, relative to Hollywood terms, I am practically just starting out and need to beef up my professional credits, as anyone out here should be doing before they seek representation. I lean towards the latter.
This particular manager decided to use my age in addition to my credits against me. They over-shot. I can work on my credits. My age is not mine to control, nor would I care to.The experience I have as a 38 year old man with a wife and family grants me depth and perspective someone 10 years younger can’t hope to have.
I am confident that I will have representation when my skills, resume and connections make it impossible for someone to say “no”.
One of the most important lessons I take from this story is one of the most important tenets of Hack Hollywood. That is ‘You are 100% in charge of your career and your life.” That means two things. One is that nobody other than you gets to decide what you do with your life. Secondly, it’s important to get your goals and plan completed so you won’t be tempted to take meetings with people before you are ready. Taking a meeting with some random manager is a bit of a combination of ego trip, looking for shortcuts and being susceptible to distractions. You didn’t decide you were ready for representation, hadn’t selected this particular manager for any particular reason and yet when someone says, “hey, do this”, you figure it couldn’t hurt. You hadn’t really thought about it too much or you might have answered, “it could hurt in the following ways” – first off, it’s not part of my plan and I didn’t choose it, so I’m not in charge of it, second, they might say something that could change my mind about what I’m doing or what I think of myself and third, I made an unfavorable impression with someone on the professional side of the business. A lot of people say to me that I only talk about what not to do in Hack Hollywood. That’s because there is only one right way to do things and a million wrong ways. Don’t confuse ‘things’ with ‘ways’. I can’t tell you the exact things to do, but I can point out what you deep down already know inside, and that is the ‘way’ to do something. It never changes. There are no shortcuts. There are ego trips and playing the lottery, which you did here. Don’t kid yourself about relationship building. You actually just killed a potential relationship by going to that meeting. He told you exactly why you shouldn’t have gone in there. Almost like his ego wanted to tell your ego you don’t have a chance. That is typical, but it has nothing to do with you. By his perception, he was exactly right. To expect him to do anything for you, you are too old and don’t have enough credits. You need to change part of that equation before you get in front of industry people hoping for work, especially people who don’t know you from Adam. I don’t know why actors are always looking for shortcuts. You wouldn’t be trying to get a job as a surgeon if you were just entering medical school and if your friend who was a doctor suggested it, you would think he was nuts. An actor tells you to meet his manager and your ego suddenly thinks, this could be my lucky break! Just stick to what you know to be true and you will get where you want to go.
Tags: acting manager
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