Last week we talked about Generals and this week we are going to talk in even more general terms. As previously mentioned, Hollywood pretty much comes down to who you know and what they think of you, so you’ve got to get them to think of you. The lot of a D-Executive is to spend substantial amounts of your time talking to people you don’t know. The more people you get to know, the more effective you are.

Film people network like mofos, no surprise there, so everyone has a never ending river of meals and meetings, very often with people they hardly know. It’s completely standard to look at your calendar when planning one of these meetings and jockey back and forth to find a day - and meal - that actually suits both of you. That’s two months away. Or have your assistants do it, of course. Sure, they usually get canceled. At least once or twice. But hang in there and you’ll get together eventually.

Maybe you met at a random party, or you were introduced by a common contact, or maybe you just cold-called them because something about what they do caught your eye. Once you come into the orbit of someone you want to cultivate a relationship with, if they’re not too far up the chain, it’s on to one of the many sit-down bread-breaking opportunities the day has to offer. It’s like a brand spanking new blind (or very briefly-sighted) date for lunch/breakfast/drinks. Every single day.

It’s the most fun when you’ve already met and you’re having lunch because you know you like each other and want to figure out if and how you can help one another. Maybe they work for a studio and you can pitch them your projects, or maybe they’re a fellow D-Person and you have a contact at a company they want to get a piece of material to, or maybe they’re a manager who wants to figure out what you can do for them and their clients. Because you like each other and want to figure out how you can work together. Because work is so much more fun when you actually like the people you’re doing it with. And it makes the time you spend working outside of work much less like work…

But it was surprising to discover that liking the people you meet doesn’t really matter that much. It’s helpful, and of course you make more effort if you like someone. But I also appreciate the way that you can form a very business-like relationship where small talk is superfluous and you know that this is someone you don’t have to talk at length to – you just do business. No need to force joviality. Just a quick hi, how are you, let’s get to the point because I know you didn’t call me to chat because we don’t really have a chatty relationship. We have a functional relationship. We did not spark to each other, you and I, but we know each other and that is enough. Now, can you do this for me?

Before entering the Hollywood fray, I worked in London. London is a jovial place. Manners are paramount and everyone falls over themselves being polite, and usually funny. I enjoyed this. I am also polite and usually funny. Calling anyone to do anything would involve a few minutes of banter because it would be rude to get to the point without observing the appropriate social rituals, and because everyone was polite and usually funny, this banter was an enjoyable experience.

And then, one day, I had to call CAA. The receptionist barked into the phone and I could feel the exasperation as I politely asked if it might please possibly be possible to be put through to so-and-so’s office, please and thank you very much. She didn’t hear the thank you very much part because she’d cut me off and bounced me over as soon as she figured out who I was asking for. And when I reached so-and-so’s office and when the shock of the assistant’s unadulterated rude wore off, it became clear to me that I was dealing with people who had no time for my stammering ways. No time at all. Not efficient. Not necessary. Less talk and more action makes you get through more, faster. Clipped sentences. Shorthand phrases. Kinda machine-like maybe, but definitely effective. And straightforward. And easy, because you know what people expect and you get to avoid unnecessary pretense. I have come to embrace this.

But it’s still better when you like them.

Dear FIDPER,

Today we are going to stop delving into my personal history. There’s a time and a place for everything and I’ve decided that today is both the time and the place to talk about meetings. Meetings are an integral part of every D-Girl and Boy’s life. But I’m not talking about just any meetings, FIDPER. Not script meetings or development meetings today, oh no. Today, we talk about Generals. Or more specifically, how Generals come about and what they are for.

An agent’s job is to get work for their clients. To get work for their clients, they have to get people to know their client’s work. And it’s really not always enough to get to know their client’s work. They want to get you to get to know their client. If you know their client personally and you’ve taken a shine to them, you’re much more likely to want to work with them in the future and – gasp – even hire them and pay them real money! Hence, said General.

After an agent pimps out their client by telling you how amazingly talented they are, they send you the client’s script or movie, which you read or watch as is appropriate for the media. If you like their script or film, then you tell the agent so and say “If you’re sending him/her out on generals, I’d love to meet him/her”. But for simplicity’s sake, we’ll stick to writers for this column. Directors already get enough attention anyway….

Sending a spec out wide (a script the writer has written on their own time, aka speculation, to hopefully sell to a very high bidder) is a great way to get exposure for a client – oh yeah, and to actually sell the script – but agents will also send out samples, scripts that are set up at other studios and production companies but are a good example of their client’s work. They are sending them to executives just like me (even though I’m special and unique and not a cog in a well-oiled machine, oh no!) all over Hollywood.

Agents are obviously clamoring to get their clients’ scripts to and meetings with the Bruckheimers[1], and Rudins[2] of the world – and their minion executives. And then there are the rest of us. We’re at varying locations on the on the continuum between mega-fancy-superstar production company and “I am a producer because I say I am, so hear me roar. But if I roar when no one who has any influence is listening, do I really make a sound?”

This results in a kind of instinctive arithmetic. The agent factors in the position of the executive’s company and the position of the executive within the company (along with the executive’s relationship with the agent) against the level of the writer (produced screenplays + assignments + rewrite gigs + buzz or none of the above). Not to mention taking into account the secret machinations of their demon puppet-master higher-ups.

The agent is also managing their client’s perceptions during this process. Writers want to meet with people who befit their station in Hollywood life. If an agent has just gone out with a writer’s first spec, they’re going to want their client to meet as many people as possible because at that level, every meeting is a meaningful meeting and the writers are happy to do the dog and pony show because they want to build relationships and, you know, careers. The more important the person the agent gets them in the room with, the better the client feels about the service their agent is giving them. But that is only half the battle.

Writers tend to be creative types and strangely seem to like it if they get to have interesting conversations with the people they meet with. So agents also want to get their clients in the room with people they’ll connect with. Therefore, the better your relationship with the agent and the more positively their clients respond to you, the more likely they are to send you good material from their higher level clients. In due time of course, but it’s all about building relationships. It’s just the executive version of the dog and pony show. The way you respond to the material an agent sends you helps them get a feel for your taste, and indicates the kinds of material you like and respond to, which is then factored into the kind of movies your company makes. And that’s how you work your way up the talent chain.

Unsurprisingly, and in keeping with everything you’ve heard, Hollywood all comes down to who you know and what they think of you….

Dear Film Industry Blogger Producer’s Development Executive Reader (or FIBPDER for short),

Welcome to my shiny, fancy new blog.  It feels fitting that I’m writing a blog, because it was a blog that set me on the unexpected path to Los Angeles.  I was a year out of school and living in Prague working for a Czech film studio as the nice, friendly English speaker who made the studio’s post-communist mentality seem a titch more user-friendly.  As if that were actually possible.  Since they were more interested in the appearance of user-friendliness than user-friendliness itself, my job “left me some free time to explore the new world that was the internets”.  No, FIBPDER, not porn.  Get that mind out of the gutter.  For now.  Even though I did type stripper in the headline….

Instead of developing (haha, developing!) unparalleled expertise in Eastern European porn, I decided to focus on things that would be useful for my as yet undefined career in the film industry.  I studied up on Variet-ese, figured out Napster and slavishly read D-Girl Diary on the now-defunct Zide-Perry website.  Hilarious and self-deprecating, the anonymous D-Girl in question wrote about casual sex with important people’s assistants and misadventures in copious drug use at Sundance, and about struggling to maintain her position and integrity in the face of all things Hollywood.  She wrote about the back-stabbing and jockeying for position, but also about the creative work and its satisfactions.   And even though she eventually abandoned LA for New York, ohhhh did I ever want that job for myself.  Because, FIDPDER, of the creative work and the ensuing satisfactions of course. Getting to read and talk to people all day? Yes, please!

After I finished school, I’d worked in the production office on a few independent films and a TV show in Toronto (the also now-defunct RELIC HUNTER, starring Tia Carerre as Indiana Jones by way of stripper archaeologist clothes) and I had no idea what development was. If you wanted a job in film in Canada production was the way to go, or at least the only direction I knew about at the time.  While distributing script breakdowns and colored pages was an exciting start, gallivanting, spec-chasing and back-stabbing sounded like sooooooo much more fun.  And also seemed like the perfect job for me, something I was ideally suited for.  Minus the back-stabbing of course.  Instead, I dreamed of an endless swanky meals with talented bon vivants and time spent reading only the BEST. SCRIPTS. EVER.  Close enough, I keep telling myself….

I’ve always been a reader.  I started early and couldn’t be stopped.  I spent my allowance on books.  I stayed up late reading with a flashlight under the covers.  I read while I walked.  On days off school, I used to sequester myself in the corner of the library and horde the new Archie comics and whatever books of the SWEET DREAMS or SWEET VALLEY HIGH variety I managed to dig out of the shelves.  (As you may have guessed, at that painful point in my pre-pubescent life I wasn’t winning any popularity contests. I’m sure will amaze those of you who know me now because trust me, I’m a delight.)  But those tweenage Harlequins were good training, and I became so well-versed that I’d read the first few chapters to get the lay of the land, and the last few for the sweet, sweet romantic satisfaction and skip right over the inevitable second act problems I’m sure plagued books that recycled plots over and over and over again.  Oh wait, just like Hollywood!

I moved around a lot so I got really, really good at talking to new people.  And I love nothing more than finding people that I actually, genuinely connect with.  Luckily, this industry is crawling with smart, driven, fantastically entertaining people (yes dear FIBPDER, of course I’m talking about you!) and I’m expected to go out and meet new ones pretty much every day.  Sometimes the plastic coating of everyone’s well-rehearsed Hollywood back-story gets a little overwhelming, and sometimes that veneer can be hard to break through.  Sometimes you can’t break through and those are the drinks and lunches and cocktail conversations that leave me wondering how someone can have no soul.  And the lack of soul seems like a particular shame for people who tell stories for a living.  But there are plenty more who have soul to spare, and that’s what makes it fun.

As a nice Canadian girl embarking on a career in the film industry, Robyn had an irrational aversion to Los Angeles.  Robyn swore up and down that she would never move there, just wasn’t suited for it, didn’t have any interest, big movies, blah blah blah.  Instead, Robyn worked in film production and development in Toronto, Prague and London before eventually, finally, grudgingly making her way to…..Los Angeles.   She has learned to never say never, and that the things she says she’ll never do are precisely the things she’s most likely to.

Welcome to FilmIndustryBloggers.com. This Blogger has just joined the Film Blog Network of FilmIndustryBloggers.com. They’ll be uploading their first blog within the week so check back!!!

The Fib Team…