Let me tell the story about this guy I met back in film school.  I remember sitting in the hallway of the film department waiting to talk to one of my professors.  There was a cute girl sitting in the hall waiting for a professor as well.  I already had a girlfriend at the time so I paid her no attention and continued drawing in my sketchbook.  Suddenly this guy comes into the hallway. 

He must have been single since he struck up conversation with the cute girl almost immediately.  His voice became loud, trying really hard to impress her,  so I overheard him say his dream was to work at Marvel Productions.  Something clicked inside my mind.

Flashback – when I was 16 I used to work for store credit in a comic book store.  One day a famous comic book artist came into the store to sign autographs.  Since I was working that day I got to hang out with him the entire time.  I told him that my dream was to become a comic book artist and he asked to see my sketchbook.  I showed it to him and he was very impressed.  He gave me his business card and said he could see me working at Marvel someday. 

Back to hallway - I went up to the guy and said, “Hi.  I overheard you say you want to work for Marvel someday.”

“Yeah I do,” he replied.

As I reached into my wallet to get out the business card and write down the number for him I asked, “Do you have their number?”

He smirked at me and said arrogantly, “Yeah I do, but I don’t want to give it to you.  You have to get it for yourself, buddy.”

What a smack in the face?!  Here I was trying to help the guy out but he came at me like a complete douche bag (you’ll meet a lot of douche bag filmmakers in OC but that’s an article for another day).  I opened my sketchbook, showed it to him and said, “Dude,  I was trying to help you out.  I’ve been a professional illustrator since high school.  And you probably just have the receptionist’s number.  I have the direct line to one of the shot callers and was going to give it to you but you just shot yourself in the foot!”

I walked back over to my professor’s door and sat back down.  I could see from the peripheral of my vision that the guy knew he screwed up bad. 

Flash forward – at the end of spring semester the film department had a special luncheon with all of the top film students.  It was a small table with about five of us.  Somehow the guy from the hallway was one of the students there.  We all took turns going around the table and talking about what we’ve been doing in the industry.  Most of the students talked about their internships at small production companies. 

When it was his turn, he acted like he was better than everyone else and said, “I currently have an amazing INTERNSHIP at Sony.  The food is incredible and you won’t believe all of the stars I’ve met.  Seriously, this internship is unbelievable.”

He went on and on relishing every second of it.  After his spiel he smiled to himself, proud of making other film students feel like crap about what they’ve been doing.  Then it was my turn.

“I have been storyboarding story movies with budgets in the low millions,” at this point I turned to him, “and have been getting paid handsomely.”

Once again the defeated look appeared on his face.  He didn’t say a single word for the rest of the luncheon. 

Flash forward – after graduation I went on to work on camera crew for HBO.  That fall I secured a steady gig teaching screenwriting at Fullerton College.  I also got by from writing on assignment and selling horror stories.  One day my girlfriend and I had to go to the Apple Store to buy a MIDI keyboard.  Since I wasn’t teaching that day, I was dressed in my typical metal head attire – black T-shirt and torn jeans. 

Guess whom we found behind the counter as we were browsing the store?  There he was dressed in an Apple Store employee shirt and matching nametag (trust me, he was way better dressed than I was since my shirt was saying “Slayer Reign In Blood”).  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  How could someone who went around telling everyone he was the next big thing in the industry end up working for minimum wage after we graduated?!  WTF?!

Of course he had no idea what I did for a living since I was dressed in my metal attire.  He said to me, “What you been up to, Vic?”

“Oh.  You know.  Same old.  Same old.”

“Really?  Well welcome to my store.”

“Your store?” I couldn’t take the high road and let this one go (I never said I was perfect), “Really?  How much you making here?”

With a smirk he replied, “Twelve bucks.”

Okay.  So maybe I was wrong about the minimum wage thing.  Nonetheless, I replied, “Wow.  That’s a lot of money.”

He scanned me up and down in my torn jeans, “So where are you staying nowadays?”

“Well . . . it really depends.  You see, whenever I teach screenwriting at the college, I stay at my house in Fullerton.  And whenever I have a writing gig in LA, I stay in my condo in Pasadena.  So it really depends on my work flow for the week.”

His eyes turned into saucers.  My girlfriend and I went ended up at Frys to buy the MIDI keyboard since the service at Apple Store really sucked that day for some reason.

The reason why I told you about this particular guy is because I have met many like him during my time pursuing my dream as a filmmaker.  For some peculiar reason I can’t really wrap my head around, people like him are a dime a dozen in Orange County.  Sadly though, this isn’t the only case of me running into someone who graduated film school with me working at the Apple Store.  Let’s explore the reasons why that might be. 

Back in college, I wasn’t your typical film student.  I didn’t live at home with my family.  I lived in a crappy studio apartment in the ghetto with my girlfriend and daughter.  Every week the police would come to our complex and raid one of the apartments.  I didn’t just have a part-time job or live off of student loans.  I worked at DHL Express during my weekdays, I worked at my sister’s cell phone store on my weekends, took MMA fights whenever I could, and if I had time remaining I would get on set and do whatever I was ordered to do.  I didn’t have the time to leisurely study like everyone else.  Since I had spent so much time away from my daughter working or going to school, I felt whenever I was home I owed it to her to spend her every waking moment playing with her.  I would only study whenever she was asleep so my average amount a sleep was roughly four hours a night.  I didn’t settle for C average work like everyone else.  My goal was to get rank number one in every class since an A wasn’t good enough for me.  Life back in those days was very hard but I was happy. 

I remember the film students quickly created cliques amongst each other.  They went to movies together, partied in Down Town Fullerton together, and worked on each other’s projects.  Since I didn’t really have time to make friends with them or hang out with them (I had mouths to feed!!!), I was forced to work on my projects all by myself.  Working by myself all of the time forced me to get good at every aspect of filmmaking, that’s why if you check my IMDB I literally have credits in every department there is. 

Due to the fact that I never made friends with the majority of them, not because I didn’t want to, but because I literally didn’t have the time to, they always kept me out of their get-togethers.  So every weekend when they hung out with one another and talked about movies, I was in Hollywood making movies.  To this very day when I go to reunions I’m still treated differently since I never hung out with them when we were in film school. 

Since I had a family to support, giving up or making excuses was never an option.  I had to make this dream happen or die trying, literally.  So I did everything I could possibly think of to establish my footing in the industry.  I worked as a production assistant.  I worked as script reader.  I worked as a storyboard artist.  I wrote horror stories for publication.  I went to mixers.  I went to world premieres.  I did everything in my power to make my dreams able to feed my family.  I always believed the only person who can stop me from fulfilling my dreams is myself, so if my dreams never come true, I only have one person to blame. 

I took my career very seriously since it was the only shot I had to get out of the ghetto.  Getting on set at a young age taught me the professionalism and thick hide it required to succeed in this industry.  I considered myself a professional and didn’t make amateur mistakes like shooting white walls, putting product placement in my films, not registering my work, shooting my whole film with a cast of young people, and spending my own money as opposed to raising money. 

My peers didn’t take their careers as seriously.  Instead of shooting and getting better at their craft on the weekends, they would go out and get smashed.  They would put out obviously amateur projects and be proud of having them on Youtube.  They would act cocky and turn off every professional they met as opposed to being humble and willing to do whatever the job demanded.  Those are just some of the mistakes they made, and it cost them dearly in the long run. 

You guys already know the whole story by now but I eventually achieved my dreams and moved out of the ghetto.  I don’t even look for projects anymore since they somehow always seem to find me.  The secret to what I’ve done is I’ve never made an excuse or a complaint about the things I had to do and just did them.  Something I learned from all of my years of doing this stuff is the people who complain or make excuses are the people who don’t really want to do it but are too embarrassed to admit that.  The people who really want to do it only make excuses as to why they should do it and only complain whenever they’re not doing it. 

The last time I saw the guy I told the stories about was at one of our film school reunions.  His current story was that he’s an executive producer now.  I looked up his IMDB on my blackberry so quickly that my thumbs grew calluses.  The only credits I saw were production assistant credits, but hey, I’m sure that if he were ever in between gigs the Apple Store would proudly take him back. 

In my basic screenwriting class, I literally have a question on my final exam asking, “Where do you end up if you don’t take your entertainment career seriously?”  The answer goes without saying. 

 

Victor Phan & Clark Jones

Torture Chamber Productions

January 16, 2010