Creative Gnus, Entertainment Rhinos

I like to think about the big entertainment landscape as a massive, sun-seared, teeming African savanna. It’s packed with wildebeest herds (endless sitcoms and reality shows), roaring bull elephants (blockbuster movies), lithe cheetahs who get winded easily (web-series), crazy monkeys throwing poop from the trees (commercials), and lots of wild-eyed jackals who just love to chatter, regardless (standup).  There are red-butted baboons (clowns at kids' parties), there are mindless packs of zebras (network programming), there are odd, five-armed creatures no one can really classify (indie films).  

And all they all really want to do is eat each other.  Growl.  Snap. Swallow. Yum.

I think of entertainment this way because it’s a fact of creative existence that -- just like the real Serengeti -- everything creative must compete.  For space. For attention. For resources. For the love of the tribal people (us), who decide whether each creativity creature will thrive, mill about aimlessly, stagger, or go extinct.

It’s a tough world, out there, on the primal floodplains of creative work. If you show your throat, there’s no end to creatures that will gladly rip your jugular and claim your precious space.

Ah, metaphor land.  Roam, lion, roam.

*  *  *

Okay, as I extract myself from my brain-Kenya, here’s my point: if you’re going to put something creative out into the world, you should be damned sure it’s strong and ready to survive. There’s no forgiveness in entertainment world. Either you have your chops, or you’re fanged and dirt-covered in a shallow grave.

Which is a lesson you learn in professional entertainment, and it’s a good lesson. Because it tells you that just wanting to do something in entertainment/art, and even actually managing to do something and bring it to fruition, none of that is enough to get you what you really want -- which is for strangers to love what you’ve done.  Love it. Because only a real love reaction for a product will get people to pay for it.  And the only way you’re going to be able to do project, project, project, project (aka, "career"), is if you get paid. Well.  Over and over. For a long time.

I learned the “it better be good” lesson in some very visceral ways.  I never really knew how to do standup until I wandered out of the protected clubs and into Florida biker bars, where the only thing that made them listen was if you were clearly and super-poweredly worth listening to.  I learned how to write jokes -- real, power jokes, jokes that explode and impress and linger in people’s minds -- once I veered away from standup and onto TV talk show staffs where I was on 13-week contracts that wouldn’t renew if I didn’t write stuff that the head writer liked well enough to put on the air ahead of everyone else’s stuff on the staff, including his own jokes.  Just think about that as a set-up:  you lose your WGA job -- your health insurance, your pension, your $3,500 a week -- if your jokes aren’t better than the jokes of the guy who hired you.  And… go!

Making your creative stuff super strong makes sense if you want it to survive -- not on the protected, virtual landscape of just doing things to be doing them -- but on the real, competitive landscape of what strangers who don’t know you actually want to watch, and buy.  If you create weak things, you’re just going to sit by and watch as they get viciously snuffed. Or as they starve, slowly, because they can't get in there and claim any nourishment of their own. All the big boys are crowding the carcass. Sorry, little web-series.

And who wants to see that happen to their precious babies?

Not me.

So that’s the set-up.  Make your stuff so good that it can lumber around on the open savannah, and leisurely tear hell out of anything that wants to get in its face.

Super powered, high-quality products, baby.  That’s what will take you where you want to go.

[Next week:  uh, okay, how do you do that?]

[Hint:  it’s the magic secret journey called “Great Development Process”]

Workwithability

Ever wonder why you didn’t get a job after you interviewed for it?  Was it that someone else better qualified came along and bumped you out?  Or was it that there was something about the way you came across that made the interviewer question whether you were someone they actually wanted to work with?

Was it your workwithability that cost you a job?

In Hollywood/Entertainment, a huge % of people are working because they’re great to work with.  Yes, people in entertainment need to be competent at their jobs, even hyper-competent, that’s the first criteria for hiring them. But, really, most of the people I’ve worked with are pretty much competent (if you’re not, you’re fired, because there are lots of people ready to take that job).  

What most often separates people in hiring is how workwithable they are. High workwithability = people want to find a way to hire you, because they enjoy having you around, and they value what you bring to the job beyond just the job skills. Low workwithability = people will never hire you again if they have any other option. Because you're just not that much fun to work with.

Workwithability is a hard quality to define exactly (maybe its easier to tell when someone is non-workwithable) but the desire to only work with likable people is powerful and ever-present, especially in entertainment.  People in entertainment are usually super-social, hyper-friendly, because they know they have to make others very comfortable with hiring them, keeping them around, and hiring them again on other projects down the road. It’s not “fake,” it’s turning the volume way up on the messaging that says “I’m cool to have around, I’m fine, I’m not a problem in any way, I’m going to make your job soooo much easier, you can trust me.” It’s almost as if in entertainment you are interviewing for a job even when you have a job, so you keep your best self forefront at all times.  And I mean at all times.  Losing your mind, your temper, or your friendliness means taking a hit on your professionalism. And even though “stars” can kind of get away with that, almost no one else in entertainment can. As soon as you show yourself as a problem, you may be a problem again in the future, and you are now suspect.

So one of the things I look for in mentees is “Is this someone who people will strongly want to work with, is this person going to attract or repel other creatives and/or producers who are doing the hiring? How do I help this person adjust certain aspects of their personality/self-presentation to make them more workwithable?  How do I help guide someone to where they are highly, clearly, unmistakably workwithable?”

So here’s a partial list of what I look for to get a sense of whether someone will strongly encourage or even slightly discourage people from working with them. 

Essentially, I'm looking for people who are:

()  Eager.  Energetic.  They have a clear, unwavering desire to do this work, and they’re ready, right now, to jump in and get to it.  I mean work work, they are going to dedicate real time and resources to this. They’re charged and ready, they won’t lose momentum or disappear halfway through the work.

()  Open.  Collaborative. Enjoy the process of developing ideas and processes with others. I love working with people who are open to working together, who want to be a part of things, who want to contribute to make something a go.

()  Positive. Upbeat.  Supportive.  Again, I don’t mean people who are falsely positive.  I mean people who genuinely enjoy what they do.  Negativity about people, about a project, about a company, about life in general -- not fun to be around. Even when it’s accurate, not fun.

()  Analysts and Fixers.  People who can take a project apart, accurately find its flaws, and fix what’s wrong.  Analysis without solutions can be useful, but it’s so much stronger if someone can also fix the flaws they see.  

()  Quality-seekers.  Because entertainment work is so hard to actually pull off, there’s a danger of becoming fatigued with a project and just wanting to get it done, regardless of whether it's good yet or not. I don’t want that in my co-workers.  I want people who want to make something great, and who will do whatever it takes to make that happen. They’re absolutely dedicated to making things good, and not stopping until every micro-element of a project is awesome.

()  Aware of their skill levels.  It’s great when someone is actually self-aware about what they’re good at and where they’re still learning.  If you tell me you’re good at everything, I’ll tell you you’re not.  No one is.  We all have weak areas, we all need to learn constantly, no matter what level we’re at, it never ends.  

()  Self-starting.  I love people who take over their area of a project and get proactive about bringing it to fruition.  They are still open to collaboration, but they become incredibly competent at their jobs.  I sincerely love competence, people who get it, get what the job is, dive in and get it done without my having to watch over them or constantly fix what they’ve done.

()  Helpful.  No matter what someone’s job is in entertainment, there are going to be constant opportunities to help other people when they need it. Having helpful people around means you can be confident that when things get nuts or out of whack, people will jump up and help you fix them.  It's makes a great environment to work in, when everyone is helpful, and wants to offer some extra brain or hands when needed.

()  Unbruisables.  People who are easily hurt, offended, or dissuaded don’t do well in entertainment.  This doesn’t mean you should let someone be cruel or even rude to you.  But it does mean that you understand people are under pressure, they need to do things fast, they don’t always have time during production to do social niceties, and you put your natural feelings aside so you can focus on work, work, work.  Allowing things to be messy, offensive, even attack-ish is important to the process of creating comedy.  It isn’t meant to harm, it’s meant as play with whatever might get things farther down the road creatively. Not being easily bruised is different than putting up with crap constantly.  Bruisable people are the death of comedy, because it makes everyone nervous about what they’re going to say.

()  Fun.  Enjoyable.  Joy-ous. I want to work with people who value fun. People who can make work fun are awesome to have around, they infuse everything with an awesome extra spirit that makes people want to come to work. They’re playful, funny, interesting, surprising, and positive. Fun people are awesome, and I’ll work with them again and again, whenever I can.

()  Perceptives.  I want people who can see things clearly and quickly, and who are especially perceptive about people around them. They know who to trust, they know who is helping get a project done, and they know who not to trust, who is a constant hindrance to a project.  For example, people should trust me. I do what I say, I try to work toward everyone's benefit, not just my own. People who don’t trust me aren’t perceptive about people. When people make me work to gain their trust, instead of being able to see I’m sincere and open and out for their best interest, it makes me question whether I want to work with them because they aren’t perceiving me correctly, so how likely are they to perceive others correctly, either? 

()  Finally, gratitude is an awesome quality in another person. It's great to hear someone express appreciation and thankfulness for what they have, what opportunities they've been given. I run into lots of people who are ambitious, want to get somewhere, and that’s great, it’s good to be motivated. But without gratitude you come across as entitled and under-appreciative of what you’ve got, what help you’ve been given.  Being openly grateful is an awesome human trait.

Ok.  Whew.  That’s enough for this post.  The Big Lesson:  Be clearly cool to work with, make people want to work with you.  It’ll pay never-ending dividends in entertainment.

The Five Must-Haves

Okay, I’m kicking off a new blog-series this week, the first installment of what I’m calling “The Five Must-Haves for Entertainment/Comedy Success.”

As I continue to develop the comedy mentoring service I offer, I’m finding that although every client has different needs and different goals, there are categories that help me see what those needs are, and which then help me clearly explain to clients what problematic elements are holding them back, and what elements might help them surge forward if we can turn up the power of those positives.  

This idea jives well my general orientation as a mentor, which is to find weaknesses, explain them, and fix them, find strengths, explain them, and strengthen them.  The more problems eliminated, the better, the more power in your power-centers, the better.

So here is the matrix I’m currently applying to clients, the five broad categories I look at to see what needs fixing, what needs powering.

()  Projects/Products

()  Skills/Talent

()  Career pathing

()  Workwithability

()  Psyche-ness

I’ll expand on each of these in the coming weeks, but just as a reference guide, here’s a quickie definition of what each of these mean to me.  

()  Projects/Products:   What have you created that can be used as samples of your work, or as buyable inventory? How ready are they to be seen/sold?

()  Skills/Talent:  What do you do well, at a professionally competitive level? What do you still need to develop?

()  Career pathing:  What makes sense as the most viable career path for you, based on your goals, skills, and life limitations?

()  Workwithability:  What makes people want to work with you, or not want to work with you?

()  Psyche-ness:  What do you need from yourself, and others, in order to stay emotionally strong and engaged in this type of work?

The Feedback Rules

I was a professor for a long time, and over the years I generally noted a sea change in the students who wandered my way. There was something different about new generations that entered my classroom. It wasn’t always clear what it was, but I felt them change.

Generally, I would describe new students as becoming “un-educatable.”  By which I mean they didn’t learn well via existing teaching structures that currently dominate all educating institutions. They tended to miss a lot of classes, got bored in lectures, didn’t take notes, didn’t read the books, didn’t study hard for the tests, didn’t put a lot of effort into the papers. They just didn’t react positively to the lecture/notes/study/test format that was established, I don’t know, back in Dickens’ times?

As someone interested in actually getting stuff into the heads of the people who were paying to be in my class, I adjusted.  I can do enough diaologic, interactive, and entertainment-powered lecturing that I can keep students’ minds in the moment -- even if they aren’t lecture-friendly -- so that wasn’t usually an issue.  I can boil info down pretty well, make it easily eatable, so that took care of them having to really focus and think. I emailed them detailed notes of every lecture, so they didn’t have to write stuff down.  I cut the reading way down, even sometimes taught without any reading at all (because they just didn’t do it, so what was the point?).

And it kind of paid off. They were happier, at least.  Well, until I had to give them feedback on their work.

That’s pretty much where the professor/mentor’s sidewalk ends.  You can’t write or produce product for the person who is on the learning side.  All you can do is read it, tell them where it fails, suggest some fixes, and hand it back for them to take another try.

Which sounds sweet and fluffy and progress-centered and all.  But, in reality, giving feedback is where all the real blood is shed in educating people about anything.  Working directly with creatives over the years has taught me a lot about giving feedback.  But even more, it’s taught me about getting feedback well.  So, here are a few suggestions/iron-born rules for how you should receive feedback.

() Separate your “core self-esteem” from this particular moment of feedback. By core self-esteem I mean the belief in your abilities that you have built up over time, over years, over many projects, the part of you that knows you’re generally funny, creative, likable, pretty good at what you do.  You need to build that, nurture it, feed it, and keep it pure and strong inside of you. You don’t have to open that big pot of self-esteem to anyone who isn’t positive. HOWEVER, you do have to be fully open to getting expert feedback on your projects, no matter how negative or positive that feedback will be. It’s not about YOU.  It’s about this product, and making it great. If you put your core self-esteem on the line every time, feedback will become a horrible emotional experience, and it will also be horrible to try to give feedback to you. No one wants to hurt your self-esteem. And no one wants to lie about the quality of your project because you have such vulnerable self-esteem.  It’s a project. It’s not you.  Separate.

()  Once you pick your feedbacker, assume they're right, and you're wrong. Quit denigrating the expert when you get negative feedback. The easiest thing in the world is to think “this person is great” when they love your stuff, and “this person is an asshole” when they don’t.  But guess what? The negative feedbacker is probably right. Much more probably than you being right, or someone who wants you to be happy is probably right. A good feedbacker is looking at your stuff with an outside eye, through years of experience and theory. And generally they want to improve it, because all real creatives want to improve everything they come into contact with.  So let them.  Stop ducking the negative. Ask for it. For real.

()  Demand -- or at least beg for -- specifics in feedback.  What’s weak?  What’s strong?  What are some general ideas for fixing the weaknesses?  Not, “Rewrite this for me,” but what are some good directions to go?  And if you’re demanding specifics, be ready to give them a reason to do that work for you, because, trust me, giving precise feedback is work.

()  Be fun to give feedback to. It’s literally the worst part of what I do as a teacher/mentor, to try to help someone who resists the information I’m giving them. The moment I see someone tense up, defend themselves, and counter-argue, I want to stop talking and stop helping.  Why would I want to slog through a conversation where I’m going to have to work to persuade someone who doesn’t know a 100th of what I know about this stuff?  I don’t.  I like helping, love collaborating, but can’t stand fighting with people who are under-informed, or over-invested in being told they’re amazing.  On the other hand, if someone wants feedback from me, and they’re eager, want to learn, want to make their stuff great, are super-open to hearing all sorts of input from great sources, and are itching to get going and do the work to make their stuff great, then I will gladly help them forever.  

() Don’t sell to your feedbacker.  I don’t care if your friends thought this was hilarious.  I don’t care if it “killed” with some audience I never saw.  I only care whether I, the comedy expert you are paying, thinks it’s funny, original, interesting, marketable. If you can make me laugh, it has a chance at being something. If I read it or watch it and am bored, it doesn’t. That’s not because I’m a perfect judge, it’s because I am a very good judge. That’s why I feel okay about charging people for mentoring. I know what works, I have a good natural ear for comedy, and I’ve worked in this stuff for a long time.  I’m a great place to get sharp, clean, on-point feedback. Telling me how much other people love this product means nothing.

()  You want my harshest, cleanest, more incisive, most grown-up feedback. You really, really do.  Because that means I’ve paid close attention to your project, thought about it, and have given my true reaction, analysis, and creative direction. That’s what you want.  You don’t want me to be the one who builds your core self-esteem (fine, I’ll do some ego-building, but only about you as a person, or about your best work -- never on your evolving or still-mediocre stuff).

()  Note to the universe:  I HATE LEAVING THINGS MEDIOCRE.  If you want to know the core of who I am as a creative, it’s this sentence. I’d rather take some hits as “the asshole” then let something go out to the world that could have been so much better if EVERYONE had been ego-open, looked hard at the theory of why this kind of project works, and done the work to make it fit that theory. SO STOP THINKING SOMETHING IS DONE AND GREAT WHEN IT'S NOT. Even if means doing a ton of extra work to get it right, don’t ever let your stuff stay mediocre.