Advice From My Parents
The film biz is an industry that can eat you up and spit you out, or rather spit out what is a former shell of yourself. This isn’t the rule, but it’s important to remember it in order to protect yourself. If you don't have a good sense of yourself – where the lines you aren’t willing to cross are, who you are as a person – you will find yourself constantly pushing your boundaries and, sometimes, into areas that you will regret.
When I was a teenager and would leave the house on a Saturday night, my parents would always say goodbye by ending with “remember who you are.” This always struck me as odd but, now that I am older, that I have been through the grinder we call life, I completely get what they were saying: “We raised you a certain way, with a certain moral code, and as that gets tested, don't give in – remember who you are.”
In the course of my career, I have been on sets where kids were being dealt with harshly, where a director has manhandled a young actress, where proper safeguards were not in place for animals, and countless safety issues where things were just not well prepared for ahead of time, and every time (well hopefully every time) I have seen something that I have found to be simply wrong, I have tried to stand up and change the course of what was happening. Sometimes, I have been the one to turn the tide, and sometimes I have actually had it work against me where, I suspect, it has cost me future work. But I’m ok with that, because I followed my gut and tried to do what I thought was right by helping where I could.
I don't mean to imply that this business is evil, but it is a business, after all, and it is dictated by the almighty dollar. Due to trying to save money or not wanting to waste time (the same thing actually), corners are constantly being cut. Add to this that we are all trying to do our jobs well, that no one wants to be the thumbtack in the sidewall of the wheel, and that it is, let’s face it, hard to stand up and say no when everyone else is saying yes.
But I will tell you this: regardless of the consequences, good or bad, I have never once felt badly about the times I have stood up, and I have only felt badly about the times, mostly early in my career, that I didn’t.
When I was still in my Steadicam training shorts, I was asked to do a ten day HUGE commercial with a rock star who was one of the biggest in the business. My guess is he is probably one of the biggest of all time. I was completely excited –big high profile job, crazy locations, more money in ten days than I had been making in three months elsewhere, and a chance to work with a huge DP. I made my deal, and they FedExed over a 30-page document which included an NDA (non- disclosure agreement) and, more importantly, a multi-page list of how we were to interact with this individual. After the common-sense stuff, like no pictures, no autographs, don't ask him to come over to dinner, etc., it went much deeper and actually stated that you were not allowed to look him in the eye, speak to him, speak loudly around him, ask him anything in any way, or really communicate with him in any way. Doing any of these things would result in instantly being fired.
As I read further into the document, I started to get a really uneasy feeling about this, and by the time I had finished the list, I realized this wasn’t a job I was comfortable with. It's not that I couldn’t have adhered to these rules (most likely, I could have) but, simply, that I thought it was wrong to treat people this way and to expect this kind of subservience. I understand protecting a huge star's privacy, but this bordered on a caste system. Furthermore, and maybe more importantly, I figured if this was the way things were beginning, what was the real shoot going to be like.
I called the producer and politely declined due to a conflict and bowed out. There’s part of me that wishes I had explained why, but I knew that wouldn't have changed much and, at that point in my career, I wasn’t ready to burn a bridge. Such is life. I know that I regretted it at the time because you always do wondering whether you made the right decision but at the same time, I know I did. I’ve never looked back, and years later, when more info came out about that rock star, I was content in the knowledge that, while I didn’t change the way that show was run, at least I wasn’t complicit in continuing a system where people’s worth was not considered.
Simple rule - remember who you are. Thanks mom and dad.
