An excellent article that every newcomer to film should read.

Good article! Paradoxically, fulfillment in life comes from giving to other people, and true appreciation comes after putting yourself in the background.
 
I strongly disagree. This is the kind of article that explains "no, this is not where pants go, this is where the hat goes - pants go on legs! No, don't pull them on your legs from that end, they go on from the other end". I mean, "be on time?" really? We need to be told "do not have tickle fights, do not play with swivel chairs"? Honey, if any of the stuff in this article comes as news to you, you don't belong on a set, period. This is a self-righteous rant from Captain Obvious.

Instead, articles like this, are counterproductive and plainly damaging in their effect, never mind the intent. I am not saying this just to be a contrarian - this is from life experience, and I'm speaking up, precisely because once upon a time, I too would have heartily agreed with the praise for this article, until I understood and experienced more. I started out in the classic way - through the mailroom of a talent agency. It is one of the top three agencies in Hollywood. What I experienced baffled me no end. We all killed to be in this position, making next to nothing, frequently successful lawyers who abandoned their field for a try at the hollywood dream, working low-level fetch-it, file, bring lunch stuff. From time to time, you'd get called on a desk of an agent when one of the regular assistants fell sick or some other emergency. Here's what completely flabbergasted me - we were given NO training. Nada. You'd get sent to the desk, you'd work assisting the agent, and more often than not, you'd get screamed at, a call would come from the agent to the mailroom - "get me someone else, I don't want this moron" - and they'd send in the next victim... the disgraced "moron" guy/gal would often resign in humiliation and leave the agency, or be fired on the spot, and more often than not, tears were involved from grown men and women. Now, this is what I couldn't wrap my head around - these were not "morons" by any stretch of the imagination, they were only the best admitted through the interview process, often successful in other careers, often offspring of successful people in the industry, go getters, hard workers and so on. Yet, they were thrown into the pit, with zero training, and they'd flame out spectacularly, leave with bad feelings. The attrition rate was spectacular. I marvelled at how with just a few basics explained, some training, you could retain extremely valuable and good people - instead, by burning through huge number of people, there was constant chaos and horrific stress and a terrible environment. I thought - wow, this is one of the biggest agencies in town, and so badly run, at least their mailroom and assistant program... they need some basic training and orientation program, and retention would go through the roof, with good effects for all. Sort of like a bigger and better version of this article - instructions for the newbie.

Then the day came for me to be called to work at an agent's desk, as the assistant had to leave for a week. All I was told, was "when you're rolling calls with the agent, listen carefully to all conversations, and execute what needs to be done without the agent having to tell you". That meant, you listen to the call and when the agent says "OK, I'll send you the script, and then let's do lunch next Tuesday" - you, headphones still on so you keep listening, are already typing out the cover letter, sending an email request to get the script you'll be sending, and you're marking the calendar for the lunch" and so on. The agent doesn't even look at you. He assumes you took care of everything. Except... how does the cover letter look? I have no idea. So, panic, I look through the computer, can't find any templates - I look around the desk, in the outbox there's a script in an envelope waiting to be sent out, prepared by the assistant before he left - thinking quickly, I rip the envelope open to look at the cover letter (I can always make a new envelope), I copy the format, rush up to have it signed by the agent... he looks it over and screams - "are you retarded??" - well, I copied the format, changed the names, but didn't notice that I kept the old CC on the letter - so now it was the wrong person CC'd on that letter... OUCH! Now, understand - I'm rushing while a million things are going on, I can't find the address whom to send this to, so I have to research this, and meanwhile other calls are coming and I have to take care of those too and I'm like DROWNING while I have no idea what is where because this is the first time I'm looking at this assistant's system and don't know what is kept where, and I can't ask for help because all the assistants around me are super busy themselves, and I'm about to lose my mind - while more calls are coming and more letters have to go out, and how do I get in touch with business affairs, and do I need to confirm the appointment before the agent goes, or... or... I am sure I'll get fired within minutes. Because I have to move so slowly, I cannot take lunch, and I stay after hours till 4 a.m. before I've done everything for that day, and then rush home for a shower and I'm back at the office 8:30 A.M. half an hour before the agent, and I cannot imagine how I'll survive four more days of this, I have not eaten, and I'm shaking. It's all a blur, but somehow, I make it. Eventually, when the assistant moves on, the agent requests me by name, I work his desk then shortly thereafter, I end up working for a founding partner of the agency and onward.

Now, throughout this ordeal, I was resentful of only one thing: why was I not given at least the most basic training? I'm willing to work extremely hard, I'm smart enough (it's not rocket science), I'm organized enough - but all of this could've been made 500 times easier if I had just a bit of instruction! I'd have loved an article "The Seven Arts of Working in an Agency"! And what could have been the harm? Isn't education/training/knowledge the foundation of everything? How can you NOT love such articles?? Well, that's what I thought too. The fact that we were given nothing, that folks were callously discarded and burned, I put down to simply more selfish hollywood bullsh|t. And then, one day, we got a new mailroom head, a guy who used to run an IT consulting business, and he did what we all dreamed of. He instituted a training program (and even had T-shirts made for the trainees!). Amazing. Attrition dropped drastically at first - agents loved not having screwups and general chaos. Then slowly a strange rot started to spread. An agent would say as usual "take care of it" or would assume something was done... only it never did. When asked what happened, the trainee would say "the course never covered that!" - mic drop. Naturally - that was bound to happen since no training can cover every contingency. Only now, the new assistant is much deeper into the desk workflow with the agent and the screwups are much, much worse... he hasn't been fired early on when s/he couldn't do much damage... and now WHO exactly is responsible to further "train" him/her? A training need that will never go away, because these guys were like the bird chick with an open beak FEED ME - only it's a grown bird and nobody has time to do that FOREVER. And we have no bench left in the mailroom, because the first batch of trainees constipated all the desks and there was no need to refill - no churn and attrition which we all wanted, right? So you can't even fire this "moron" (in reality, bright, but simply not suited to this work), because you don't have a deep bench left in the mailroom. Within 6 months the mailroom head was gone and we went back to the old system of chaos and attrition and brutality and things were humming again, and no, no training AT ALL.

What happened? As an old literary agent explained to me: "in our industry, you either have it, or don't have it, and we're looking for those who have it". It's not about intelligence, hard work, good manners or anything else - you either have "it" so you can hack it in this environment, or you don't. That "it" cannot be taught. The way you find out if somebody is going to be able to think on their feet and improvise and GET. IT. DONE., push the ball forward, close the deal, and find the solution, is by having this person thrown into it and forcing them to do it or fail - training is counterproductive in that environment, because it disguises the differences between those who have "it" and those who don't - and eventually circumstances will call on the "it" and there will be a giant FAIL. Instead, you throw them in the water - sink or swim. Salmon spawn by going up river on a long, long journey. Only the strongest make it, while the majority perish along the way. Now someone comes along and says "all that attrition! waste! horror! injustice!" - let's station people along the stream, with paddles and help ALL the salmon along, push them ALL along and let them ALL succeed! Then, within a couple of generations, the salmon population collapses due to the unfit overwhelming the fit.

Darwin. It's not "cruel" - it's a law of nature and organization. Until the day we can identify the right person for the right job just by hooking them up to a machine, we are forced to rely on trial and error and sink or swim. To attempt to ameliorate this is counterproductive and destructive. Couple of quick examples: there is a rule in the industry - "one call". You only call an actor, agent, executive, industry person ONCE - leave word. They call you back - or not. You do NOT call again if you don't hear from them. This simple rule evolved in the industry from necessity. If an actor/agent/executive thinks s/he'll get more calls, reminders and the like, they're much, much more likely to blow off your call - you'll just call again. The world is filled with flakes just waiting for an opportunity to flake. Only by establishing an iron discipline "one call", no second chances, do you keep folks in line. This evolved in the real world - of necessity. It would be a terrible disservice to the industry to now corrupt this by subverting the rule with well-meaning "reminders". When crewing up or waiting for actors, someone will always suggest 'calling them to remind them' - and that is exactly the wrong thing to do. That would be interfering with Darwin's work - I want to find out who is unreliable... we had an agreement, if this job is not important enough for you to keep this date and time in mind, you are not committed enough for the production, and I WANT YOU GONE NOW - NOW - not later, because later can screw me up when you inevitably fail on the job much deeper and with more damage. I want to get rid of you now - as early as possible in the process. And so too with promoting people with "helpful" efforts that don't allow us to battle test them to separate the wheat from the chaff... you end up with folks in high positions who are not battle-tested - and as any military in the world knows, the higher up you are the more horrible the consequences of screwups, so you really want to weed out those who don't have "it" early on, before they can cause much worse damage. That means exactly the interns, the PAs, the assistants, the entry level - throw them in the water with NO assistance, sink or swim. Cut them early, before they manage to do a lot of damage - better winnow out at the stage of the PA than waiting until s/he's "helpfully" promoted to AD or some higher position where they can really screw up big time. And that means NO helping hands and paddles along the stream for the salmon - the lack of assistance is a feature not a bug. It is the only way to identify those who are suited - because you cannot do so just by judging intelligence, geniality, looks, hygiene or anything else. Only trial by fire will identify those who have "it". Therefore articles like these are the enemy. And cutting the folks in the early stages does a favor to them too - it lets them move on quickly and find their niche and career instead of wasting their life on the wrong track only to fail later when it's much harder to recover and switch direction.

This article is damaging and counterproductive in every way - first, it damages the very people it purports to address itself to, because it imbues them with a false sense of competence instead of allowing them to fail should it be their nature to fail in this particular field and prevents them from moving on... it's as if we had a really good aptitude test, and you are providing a cheat sheet - you damage the person who will now be in the wrong job. And you damage the industry by preventing us from utilizing this natural winnowing process - we'll end up like the agency did after implementing the wrong-headed training program. If I throw in some clothes into a room, I want to know who the guy is who puts pants on his head - and get rid of him, not instruct him how to put on his pants. If I have to tell someone to be on time, not loaf around, play tickle games, and strew garbage around the set - I don't want that person, period, because if they don't have sense enough to discover these things on their own, they'll only fail later with something more critical because they don't have what it takes and there is no way to train for every contingency.

So why is this article praised so much? Well, apart from the natural tendency to revere any instruction manual/article and advice that's packed with "truth" - we cannot imagine that there is any downside to such information packed advice, how can there be? So it's counterintuitive. But there is something else going on. If you look at it carefully, what people like is the outcome they imagine "well informed, smoothly functioning PA and an asset on the set" as described by this article if all that advice were being expressed by the behavior of the PA - they don't think beyond that fact. That's it, in toto. They don't take the next step and ask themselves "well, is it really true that if PA-candidate Joe Blow reads this and remembers it, the set will function well" - they take it for granted that it would be an unalloyed good... which in reality it would not. Liking this article is the result of stopping the thinking at the moment of imaging how a set would function of all PAs remembered the advice in the article. Instead, thinking further would show us that this is as helpful to the PAs and the industry as having paddle helpers along rivers would be helpful to both the salmon and the salmon industry - which means it would be an utter disaster.

I therefore nominate this article as a fantasy that's nice to imagine and a disaster if implemented. It should not be read by prospective PAs - ever.

However, this is hard for people to stomach. Because massive attrition seems wasteful if not cruel. But the entertainment industry is overflowing with applicants - and a better way has yet to be devised to identify those who have "it" and who are best suited to working in this industry.

In fact, there are well over a hundred comments on this article - and only one industry person who has identified this article for the faulty premise it has and its terrible effects - unfortunately the person expresses themselves crudely and not terribly eloquently, but if you look at the context I explained in this post, you'll glean their meaning:

"As a working and award winning feature and music video Director, Producer, and First AD: **** that.Prove that you have the right to be here, and earn my respect, or get the hell off of my set. Hell, there are too many people in Hollywood (ever increasing) fighting for fewer and fewer jobs. The industry sends most people packing to protect itself. Unions aren't enough. Corporate culture is needed to protect it.
I need strong dedicated motivated people that I can rely on in the most brutal of environments, when everything is going down in flames. I have to know who I can count on well before I need to count on them. Every beginning person of power starts nice, and conciliatory, mindful of feelings. But when hell lands on earth and you have no idea who you can trust, you make mistakes which make it worse, and then you are blamed (rightfully so) for your underlings mistakes. Then you never work for a certain group of people again. Mistakes (yours, and others) get you fired and burn bridges. Bridges burned are like lessons learned: you only go that way once. Then your livelihood and future success are threatened.
test everyone. know your teams strengths. make them strong, make them tough, teach them what they need to know. But that all takes Time. my time is precious, and I only teach those who I feel are worth the time to invest in, because some traits and qualities help you survive, and some don't.
You don't have to be a tiger, just don't be a rabbit. But know that the tigers will be promoted, and will run the show. Want to be in charge? Be a tiger."

In short, this is a terrible article, which should not be read by anyone aspiring to work on a set - and I don't say this lightly. Hopefully I've provided a convincing argument for my position.
 
Nobody knows. Old debate, nature vs nurture, or a mixture of both. Talents are not distributed evenly. Someone might make an excellent lawyer but a lousy dentist, great DP, but a lousy musician, great military leader, but poor community organizer, great business leader, but poor secretarial material and so on. Agents have something - it's hard to describe - like an instinct, a feeling for negotiation, feeling about what the other side wants and how to close a deal. It's a peculiar talent, and not something you can teach. We've all seen these kinds of things. Some extremely intelligent people f.ex. are hopeless as businessmen, and some excellent businessmen would make hopeless academics. It's like with economists - you can have Nobel prize winning economic thinkers who can't balance their checkbooks, or you can have super shrewd billionaire businessmen who have a high school dropout education. Is it genetic? Maybe. Or maybe they had just the right environmental stimulus. Or a combination of the two - maybe a genetic predisposition to do well in a given field, but they need a specific stimulant from the environment to unlock their genetic potential, so you need both. As of today, there is no way to predict who will be good at business, or art, or music or whatever - it must all come out in trial and error, where those people emerge. Perhaps one day we'll be able to answer those questions as to how a talent exists and flourishes, but not yet today.
 
OldCorpse said:
I strongly disagree. This is the kind of article that explains "no, this is not where pants go, this is where the hat goes - pants go on legs! No, don't pull them on your legs from that end, they go on from the other end". I mean, "be on time?" really? We need to be told "do not have tickle fights, do not play with swivel chairs"? Honey, if any of the stuff in this article comes as news to you, you don't belong on a set, period. This is a self-righteous rant from Captain Obvious.

Instead, articles like this, are counterproductive and plainly damaging in their effect, never mind the intent. I am not saying this just to be a contrarian - this is from life experience, and I'm speaking up, precisely because once upon a time, I too would have heartily agreed with the praise for this article, until I understood and experienced more. I started out in the classic way - through the mailroom of a talent agency. It is one of the top three agencies in Hollywood. What I experienced baffled me no end. We all killed to be in this position, making next to nothing, frequently successful lawyers who abandoned their field for a try at the hollywood dream, working low-level fetch-it, file, bring lunch stuff. From time to time, you'd get called on a desk of an agent when one of the regular assistants fell sick or some other emergency. Here's what completely flabbergasted me - we were given NO training. Nada. You'd get sent to the desk, you'd work assisting the agent, and more often than not, you'd get screamed at, a call would come from the agent to the mailroom - "get me someone else, I don't want this moron" - and they'd send in the next victim... the disgraced "moron" guy/gal would often resign in humiliation and leave the agency, or be fired on the spot, and more often than not, tears were involved from grown men and women. Now, this is what I couldn't wrap my head around - these were not "morons" by any stretch of the imagination, they were only the best admitted through the interview process, often successful in other careers, often offspring of successful people in the industry, go getters, hard workers and so on. Yet, they were thrown into the pit, with zero training, and they'd flame out spectacularly, leave with bad feelings. The attrition rate was spectacular. I marvelled at how with just a few basics explained, some training, you could retain extremely valuable and good people - instead, by burning through huge number of people, there was constant chaos and horrific stress and a terrible environment. I thought - wow, this is one of the biggest agencies in town, and so badly run, at least their mailroom and assistant program... they need some basic training and orientation program, and retention would go through the roof, with good effects for all. Sort of like a bigger and better version of this article - instructions for the newbie.

Then the day came for me to be called to work at an agent's desk, as the assistant had to leave for a week. All I was told, was "when you're rolling calls with the agent, listen carefully to all conversations, and execute what needs to be done without the agent having to tell you". That meant, you listen to the call and when the agent says "OK, I'll send you the script, and then let's do lunch next Tuesday" - you, headphones still on so you keep listening, are already typing out the cover letter, sending an email request to get the script you'll be sending, and you're marking the calendar for the lunch" and so on. The agent doesn't even look at you. He assumes you took care of everything. Except... how does the cover letter look? I have no idea. So, panic, I look through the computer, can't find any templates - I look around the desk, in the outbox there's a script in an envelope waiting to be sent out, prepared by the assistant before he left - thinking quickly, I rip the envelope open to look at the cover letter (I can always make a new envelope), I copy the format, rush up to have it signed by the agent... he looks it over and screams - "are you retarded??" - well, I copied the format, changed the names, but didn't notice that I kept the old CC on the letter - so now it was the wrong person CC'd on that letter... OUCH! Now, understand - I'm rushing while a million things are going on, I can't find the address whom to send this to, so I have to research this, and meanwhile other calls are coming and I have to take care of those too and I'm like DROWNING while I have no idea what is where because this is the first time I'm looking at this assistant's system and don't know what is kept where, and I can't ask for help because all the assistants around me are super busy themselves, and I'm about to lose my mind - while more calls are coming and more letters have to go out, and how do I get in touch with business affairs, and do I need to confirm the appointment before the agent goes, or... or... I am sure I'll get fired within minutes. Because I have to move so slowly, I cannot take lunch, and I stay after hours till 4 a.m. before I've done everything for that day, and then rush home for a shower and I'm back at the office 8:30 A.M. half an hour before the agent, and I cannot imagine how I'll survive four more days of this, I have not eaten, and I'm shaking. It's all a blur, but somehow, I make it. Eventually, when the assistant moves on, the agent requests me by name, I work his desk then shortly thereafter, I end up working for a founding partner of the agency and onward.

Now, throughout this ordeal, I was resentful of only one thing: why was I not given at least the most basic training? I'm willing to work extremely hard, I'm smart enough (it's not rocket science), I'm organized enough - but all of this could've been made 500 times easier if I had just a bit of instruction! I'd have loved an article "The Seven Arts of Working in an Agency"! And what could have been the harm? Isn't education/training/knowledge the foundation of everything? How can you NOT love such articles?? Well, that's what I thought too. The fact that we were given nothing, that folks were callously discarded and burned, I put down to simply more selfish hollywood bullsh|t. And then, one day, we got a new mailroom head, a guy who used to run an IT consulting business, and he did what we all dreamed of. He instituted a training program (and even had T-shirts made for the trainees!). Amazing. Attrition dropped drastically at first - agents loved not having screwups and general chaos. Then slowly a strange rot started to spread. An agent would say as usual "take care of it" or would assume something was done... only it never did. When asked what happened, the trainee would say "the course never covered that!" - mic drop. Naturally - that was bound to happen since no training can cover every contingency. Only now, the new assistant is much deeper into the desk workflow with the agent and the screwups are much, much worse... he hasn't been fired early on when s/he couldn't do much damage... and now WHO exactly is responsible to further "train" him/her? A training need that will never go away, because these guys were like the bird chick with an open beak FEED ME - only it's a grown bird and nobody has time to do that FOREVER. And we have no bench left in the mailroom, because the first batch of trainees constipated all the desks and there was no need to refill - no churn and attrition which we all wanted, right? So you can't even fire this "moron" (in reality, bright, but simply not suited to this work), because you don't have a deep bench left in the mailroom. Within 6 months the mailroom head was gone and we went back to the old system of chaos and attrition and brutality and things were humming again, and no, no training AT ALL.

What happened? As an old literary agent explained to me: "in our industry, you either have it, or don't have it, and we're looking for those who have it". It's not about intelligence, hard work, good manners or anything else - you either have "it" so you can hack it in this environment, or you don't. That "it" cannot be taught. The way you find out if somebody is going to be able to think on their feet and improvise and GET. IT. DONE., push the ball forward, close the deal, and find the solution, is by having this person thrown into it and forcing them to do it or fail - training is counterproductive in that environment, because it disguises the differences between those who have "it" and those who don't - and eventually circumstances will call on the "it" and there will be a giant FAIL. Instead, you throw them in the water - sink or swim. Salmon spawn by going up river on a long, long journey. Only the strongest make it, while the majority perish along the way. Now someone comes along and says "all that attrition! waste! horror! injustice!" - let's station people along the stream, with paddles and help ALL the salmon along, push them ALL along and let them ALL succeed! Then, within a couple of generations, the salmon population collapses due to the unfit overwhelming the fit.

Darwin. It's not "cruel" - it's a law of nature and organization. Until the day we can identify the right person for the right job just by hooking them up to a machine, we are forced to rely on trial and error and sink or swim. To attempt to ameliorate this is counterproductive and destructive. Couple of quick examples: there is a rule in the industry - "one call". You only call an actor, agent, executive, industry person ONCE - leave word. They call you back - or not. You do NOT call again if you don't hear from them. This simple rule evolved in the industry from necessity. If an actor/agent/executive thinks s/he'll get more calls, reminders and the like, they're much, much more likely to blow off your call - you'll just call again. The world is filled with flakes just waiting for an opportunity to flake. Only by establishing an iron discipline "one call", no second chances, do you keep folks in line. This evolved in the real world - of necessity. It would be a terrible disservice to the industry to now corrupt this by subverting the rule with well-meaning "reminders". When crewing up or waiting for actors, someone will always suggest 'calling them to remind them' - and that is exactly the wrong thing to do. That would be interfering with Darwin's work - I want to find out who is unreliable... we had an agreement, if this job is not important enough for you to keep this date and time in mind, you are not committed enough for the production, and I WANT YOU GONE NOW - NOW - not later, because later can screw me up when you inevitably fail on the job much deeper and with more damage. I want to get rid of you now - as early as possible in the process. And so too with promoting people with "helpful" efforts that don't allow us to battle test them to separate the wheat from the chaff... you end up with folks in high positions who are not battle-tested - and as any military in the world knows, the higher up you are the more horrible the consequences of screwups, so you really want to weed out those who don't have "it" early on, before they can cause much worse damage. That means exactly the interns, the PAs, the assistants, the entry level - throw them in the water with NO assistance, sink or swim. Cut them early, before they manage to do a lot of damage - better winnow out at the stage of the PA than waiting until s/he's "helpfully" promoted to AD or some higher position where they can really screw up big time. And that means NO helping hands and paddles along the stream for the salmon - the lack of assistance is a feature not a bug. It is the only way to identify those who are suited - because you cannot do so just by judging intelligence, geniality, looks, hygiene or anything else. Only trial by fire will identify those who have "it". Therefore articles like these are the enemy. And cutting the folks in the early stages does a favor to them too - it lets them move on quickly and find their niche and career instead of wasting their life on the wrong track only to fail later when it's much harder to recover and switch direction.

This article is damaging and counterproductive in every way - first, it damages the very people it purports to address itself to, because it imbues them with a false sense of competence instead of allowing them to fail should it be their nature to fail in this particular field and prevents them from moving on... it's as if we had a really good aptitude test, and you are providing a cheat sheet - you damage the person who will now be in the wrong job. And you damage the industry by preventing us from utilizing this natural winnowing process - we'll end up like the agency did after implementing the wrong-headed training program. If I throw in some clothes into a room, I want to know who the guy is who puts pants on his head - and get rid of him, not instruct him how to put on his pants. If I have to tell someone to be on time, not loaf around, play tickle games, and strew garbage around the set - I don't want that person, period, because if they don't have sense enough to discover these things on their own, they'll only fail later with something more critical because they don't have what it takes and there is no way to train for every contingency.

So why is this article praised so much? Well, apart from the natural tendency to revere any instruction manual/article and advice that's packed with "truth" - we cannot imagine that there is any downside to such information packed advice, how can there be? So it's counterintuitive. But there is something else going on. If you look at it carefully, what people like is the outcome they imagine "well informed, smoothly functioning PA and an asset on the set" as described by this article if all that advice were being expressed by the behavior of the PA - they don't think beyond that fact. That's it, in toto. They don't take the next step and ask themselves "well, is it really true that if PA-candidate Joe Blow reads this and remembers it, the set will function well" - they take it for granted that it would be an unalloyed good... which in reality it would not. Liking this article is the result of stopping the thinking at the moment of imaging how a set would function of all PAs remembered the advice in the article. Instead, thinking further would show us that this is as helpful to the PAs and the industry as having paddle helpers along rivers would be helpful to both the salmon and the salmon industry - which means it would be an utter disaster.

I therefore nominate this article as a fantasy that's nice to imagine and a disaster if implemented. It should not be read by prospective PAs - ever.

However, this is hard for people to stomach. Because massive attrition seems wasteful if not cruel. But the entertainment industry is overflowing with applicants - and a better way has yet to be devised to identify those who have "it" and who are best suited to working in this industry.

In fact, there are well over a hundred comments on this article - and only one industry person who has identified this article for the faulty premise it has and its terrible effects - unfortunately the person expresses themselves crudely and not terribly eloquently, but if you look at the context I explained in this post, you'll glean their meaning:

"As a working and award winning feature and music video Director, Producer, and First AD: poo poo that.Prove that you have the right to be here, and earn my respect, or get the hell off of my set. Hell, there are too many people in Hollywood (ever increasing) fighting for fewer and fewer jobs. The industry sends most people packing to protect itself. Unions aren't enough. Corporate culture is needed to protect it.
I need strong dedicated motivated people that I can rely on in the most brutal of environments, when everything is going down in flames. I have to know who I can count on well before I need to count on them. Every beginning person of power starts nice, and conciliatory, mindful of feelings. But when hell lands on earth and you have no idea who you can trust, you make mistakes which make it worse, and then you are blamed (rightfully so) for your underlings mistakes. Then you never work for a certain group of people again. Mistakes (yours, and others) get you fired and burn bridges. Bridges burned are like lessons learned: you only go that way once. Then your livelihood and future success are threatened.
test everyone. know your teams strengths. make them strong, make them tough, teach them what they need to know. But that all takes Time. my time is precious, and I only teach those who I feel are worth the time to invest in, because some traits and qualities help you survive, and some don't.
You don't have to be a tiger, just don't be a rabbit. But know that the tigers will be promoted, and will run the show. Want to be in charge? Be a tiger."

In short, this is a terrible article, which should not be read by anyone aspiring to work on a set - and I don't say this lightly. Hopefully I've provided a convincing argument for my position.
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Ha, ha David, good one :)! Any time you go outside of popular opinion by more than a given degree, you're liable to come across as a raving lunatic - I plead guilty :grin:.
 
combatentropy said:
Well, if any part is nurture, doesn't that sabotage your argument?
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Not at all. Because the way it works is that in nurture, timing can also be a factor. For example, all of us can learn a language without an accent - 100% of humans, and we all agree that any given language is not genetic, but environmental... French people are not genetically predisposed to pronounce French sounds - it's all entirely environmental. But. Only a few of us are able to learn a language without an accent past about the age of 12. So timing can be a huge factor. In our example, if there is such a thing as "suited to be a great agent" being entirely environmental, what if that ability to organize and negotiate and other skills that make some people just outstanding agents needs to be environmentally developed, by a given age - and by the time people turn up at an agency the die is cast, it's far too late to try to train them to be an agent... by that point, they either have it or not. See how easy that was? Anyhow, rather than go through these 101 case scenarios, it's probably best to think through the argument and only pose a question or objection when it doesn't invite a completely obvious rebuttal... you can assume I thought through the most obvious counterarguments - you need to dig a bit deeper if you think there's one to be made.
 
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Well, here's some counter-argument, OldCorpse.

1) You didn't really understand the article if you think your description of "reality" somehow invalidates it. I had to re-read your post several times to make sure I hadn't missed something, but I didn't. The article wholeheartedly embraces the "reality" you present. It's pretty much the whole reason it was written.

2) You blew past several dozen working, industry professionals (including our own Erik Olson) all saying the article is spot-on, apparently in search of someone who agreed with you on it, only the one you chose didn't actually identify what you call the "faulty premise" of the article; it (by implication) agreed with the article. What it DISAGREED with was another post which said the article was true, but that the industry needs to change so it doesn't have to be. The post you quoted was responding to THAT assertion, not the article. You presented it as though it were speaking to the article itself instead of being a reply to another post.

3) Your experiences in the mail room of a talent agency aren't really germane. Sure, all businesses are somewhat analogous, but only somewhat. A film set is no more the mail room of a talent agency than it is the floor of a car dealership. Also, you're speaking entirely from the point of view of the equivalent of a PA, not from the point of view of someone higher up the food chain who actually knows why this article is invaluable.

4) While this article gives suggestions as to how to avoid the bad behaviors it identifies, to say that it tries to be some kind of instruction manual which might give a false sense of "competence" is to claim the article is trying to be something it definitely isn't. It's about what not to do on set, and what beginner mistakes to avoid.

5) The fact that some people DO INDEED need to be told that they have to be on time and shouldn't horse around on set is pretty much the point. I have no idea what your experience is on sets, big or small, if you have any, but it doesn't matter the size of the set -- there's always someone treating it like fantasy camp. It does no harm AT ALL to try to head that off at the pass, especially HERE, at DVXuser.

6) If we here at DVXuser adopted the attitude of "you've either got it or you don't, if you don't, then F off; we're not going to bother with you," then we might as well just shut down.

Ironically, your post is one of the most counterproductive and destructive posts I've seen here at DVXuser -- saying people should disregard this article is SPECTACULARLY BAD advice. And I do have some trouble buying that you didn't post it to be contrarian.
 
Based on these counterarguments, I think there has been some clear misunderstanding. I'll try my best to clear it up - but I have neither the desire to repeat myself, nor engage in arguing for its own sake.

David Jimerson said:
Well, here's some counter-argument, OldCorpse.

1) You didn't really understand the article if you think your description of "reality" somehow invalidates it. I had to re-read your post several times to make sure I hadn't missed something, but I didn't. The article wholeheartedly embraces the "reality" you present. It's pretty much the whole reason it was written.
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I'm honestly not sure what you mean by "reality" here. I never disputed that what the article describes is what actually occurs on sets; it definitely reflects what happens all too often, and I didn't say otherwise - so...?

David Jimerson said:
2) You blew past several dozen working, industry professionals (including our own Erik Olson) all saying the article is spot-on,[...]
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No I did not "blow past" these endorsements - the exact opposite is the case, as I in fact remarked that of over 100 comments only one took issue with the article - clearly the other comments thought it was "spot on"... which it was - I never disputed that the article describes the reality on sets very well.

David Jimerson said:
apparently in search of someone who agreed with you on it, only the one you chose didn't actually identify what you call the "faulty premise" of the article; it (by implication) agreed with the article. What it DISAGREED with was another post which said the article was true, but that the industry needs to change so it doesn't have to be. The post you quoted was responding to THAT assertion, not the article. You presented it as though it were speaking to the article itself instead of being a reply to another post.
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And here we have the crux of the misunderstanding. You clearly have taken a meaning out of my post that I did not intend - and for that I must hold myself accountable... it is my fault for not expressing myself clearly enough (remember: never blame the audience/reader - any misunderstanding is your own fault, in this case mine).

OK, I will now therefore make a nutshell version of what I meant. I will do so using an analogy. Let us imagine that we have a entrance exam math test at school that we administer to applicants/students, because we want to identify and produce a lot of good math prodigies to work at our university. The "math entrance exam" is the "work on a film set" here, and "applicants/students" are "PA's" and University is Film Industry. After administering those entrance exams for years, a school administrator writes an article describing all the terrible ways in which great numbers of applicants/students fail the exam, the horrible basic math mistakes, the inability to even follow what the problems are about, not even being properly read. Well, that certainly is true - that's the sad reality of those tests, "spot on" - just as it is a sad reality that those behaviors occur on sets - "spot on". No dispute from me. That part of the article is 100% correct. The implication by the author is - "wouldn't it be wonderful, if all the students gave these correct answers to all these entrance exam questions!!!" - or in the OP article "wouldn't it be wonderful if all PAs obeyed these principles, thus behaving correctly!" - why yes, it would be. But now comes the next step and the point at which I disagree with the premise of the article as well as those who agree with it. Because the solution the author proposes to this terrible situation and the way to assure the success of test taking, is according to the author, to... provide the answer to the test to the students ahead of time, so when the time comes to take the test, they copy forth all the answers provided - and presto, we have a 100% passing rate! That is the heart of my argument. The faulty premise in the article is to imagine that by writing this out and having PA's read and memorize these "proper behaviors" and avoiding "these mistakes", you will have a fantastically functioning set (this premise is echoed by your exhortation for folks to read and re-read this article and memorize these behaviors to mimic on set). That is a catastrophe - because it subverts the very purpose of having an entrance exam test in the first place. It is a misunderstanding of the purpose of the test - identifying suitable applicants/students. Publishing these test answers, and having students memorize them - publishing these principles and having the PA's memorize them are here equivalent. Do you see what's wrong here? The students/applicants/PAs have regurgitated back to us 100% correct test results (on-set behaviors), but you have utterly failed to identify suitable applicants and talent for the University / Film Industry.

My entire point was that people are so blinded by the idea that "wow, terrible test results/on-set behaviors" "here are the correct answers /on-set behaviors" that they failed to take the elementary step to ask themselves if providing the answers ahead of time, or this article to PA's, is good in the long run, for either the film industry, or the PA's themselves. You will not end up with math prodigies working at your university by providing a cheat sheet at exam time, and you will not end up with good film industry workers by providing them with this cheat sheet of desired behaviors. Instead, the exam is there to cut out the unsuitables, and the wrong behaviors of PAs are there to identify who is unsuitable and needs to be fired pronto. Police detectives would be horrified if someone published an article on "here is how we identify criminals, and if you want to not be identified as an undesirable, alter your behavior such and such" - the article may be "spot on", but it is SOCIALLY DESTRUCTIVE, because it allows the criminal to hide and makes identifying them much harder. It doesn't alter their criminal nature, it allows them to mimic honest people and harder to identify to law enforcement. So it should not be published because it is "counterproductive and destructive". Same here. We need to weed out the unsuitable - those who need to be told that you can't be late for a job where a minute can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars... UNSUITABLE; those who need to be told not to engage in tickle games... UNSUITABLE; those who need to be told not to strew garbage around a set... UNSUITABLE; those who need to be told any of the obvious things this "spot on" article identifies... UNSUITABLE. Fire them. You've identified the unsuitable - keep going through PAs until you find one who is suitable. Question: if you are hiring, how do you treat folks who are late to the interview, wear unsuitable clothes, have hygiene issues or otherwise identify themselves as undesirable as hires? You're glad you've dodged a bullet - you would not appreciate having a consultant stop these guys before they reach you and coach them so they can penetrate your organization and wreak havoc. Because that inability to understand the basics is a tell. It will manifest later in some other far more damaging context. So you want to weed out as early as possible. Articles like this are like the interview coaches, like the detective methods reveals - counterproductive and destructive.

And it is in this light, that I highlighted that one comment: of course he "agreed with the article" - as did I. It describes the sorry state of unsuitable PAs. Agreed. But he - seems to me - implicitly disagreed with that part of it - the premise - that giving cheat sheets such as this article, hand-holding, out of your way instructions (further exacerbated by the comment he's responding to, which urges the industry to be even more smarmy and "let me kiss your boo-boo" to incompetents) is a practical or desirable solution. He has neither the time, nor inclination to provide advice to pants-on-the-head morons, people who obviously don't belong on a busy set - and in truth, who during production has the time to fix a PA's string of out of sight idiotic mistakes and appalling behavior. You fire the pants-on-the-head guys, you don't provide instruction on how to put on pants.

David Jimerson said:
3) Your experiences in the mail room of a talent agency aren't really germane. Sure, all businesses are somewhat analogous, but only somewhat. A film set is no more the mail room of a talent agency than it is the floor of a car dealership. Also, you're speaking entirely from the point of view of the equivalent of a PA, not from the point of view of someone higher up the food chain who actually knows why this article is invaluable.
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The analogy I was attempting to draw was between the undesirability of bypassing weeding mechanisms by well-meaning cheat sheets, instruction and hand holding. Of course they are different environments, but I believe this aspect is applicable to all. I am talking about the impact on the PA winnowing process - and the higher up food chain guys who think these prescribed bromides are anything good in the long run, are simply mistaken - as I argued extensively (the entire purpose of my post).

David Jimerson said:
4) While this article gives suggestions as to how to avoid the bad behaviors it identifies, to say that it tries to be some kind of instruction manual which might give a false sense of "competence" is to claim the article is trying to be something it definitely isn't. It's about what not to do on set, and what beginner mistakes to avoid.
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And that's why it is destructive. It is equivalent to "if you don't want to be caught by the police, avoid these common beginner criminal mistakes" - I don't want them to avoid those mistakes. Because if they can commit mistakes so grotesque, they identify themselves as pants-on-the-head undesirables, to be fired - I don't want the industry to be deprived of this "tell". Don't publish this article, don't promote it, don't tell PAs to read it.

David Jimerson said:
5) The fact that some people DO INDEED need to be told that they have to be on time and shouldn't horse around on set is pretty much the point. I have no idea what your experience is on sets, big or small, if you have any, but it doesn't matter the size of the set -- there's always someone treating it like fantasy camp. It does no harm AT ALL to try to head that off at the pass, especially HERE, at DVXuser.
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I have decent experience of sets, both my own (for films I produced) and others (where I helped, or simply observed), and both in the U.S. and in Europe - certainly not as much as many, but enough to understand the landscape. You are 100% correct, there are people who need to be told about those behaviors - that's the point of the article that's "spot on". But my counterpoint is that those are badly run sets - you'll agree that there are plenty of badly run sets - if they tolerate such behavior rather than instantly firing the offenders. And my point is - as in the one comment on the article I highlighted - those who prove by their behavior that they need to be told these extremely basic things, are immediate candidates for summary firing as complete unsuitables. I don't want someone around a critical enterprise, who needs to be told that pants don't go on the head.

David Jimerson said:
6) If we here at DVXuser adopted the attitude of "you've either got it or you don't, if you don't, then F off; we're not going to bother with you," then we might as well just shut down.
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Come on. That is not in the least what I advocated. I said very explicitly that this is suitable winnowing out at the very lowest level of the food chain (and the article addresses itself to the PA level), and is just the first cut. Surely you understand that - every single organization has exactly the same process: you want to cut out those who are most fundamentally unsuitable. After that you do provide training/information/instruction to those who make the cut, who prove to have it. If you apply to the military, you will receive f.ex. officer training, or really any training - but only after you pass the most basic fitness/aptitude test. Before you even have a chance at that, the military will winnow out those who have physical or mental problems. Universities, trade schools etc. will not accept anybody off the street - they have basic requirements and may have entrance tests. That first cut is unapologetically a winnowing process to at least identify those who meet basic requirements. My claim is that at the level of PA - the most basic entry level of work on a set - if you fail to meet at least such basics as turning up on time, you need to be winnowed out.

DVX user is the next level, and - as anywhere - information is provided, rightly so. Schools teach. Military promotes. But that is after the basic cut. And when we have someone turn up here at such a level of inability, they get shown out. I don't want to identify a past poster here (just a hint - his name had to do with metal and equines), who seemed reasonably intelligent, certainly literate, but kept asking such insanely basic questions, and after being given film 101 answers patiently over and over again, he kept being confused - finally, Barry exasperated banned him. Some people unjustly accused him of trolling - but I thought it was crystal clear that the guy just didn't have the neurological organization for film work - he was not a troll. It has nothing to do with intelligence or willingness to work hard - but to give an extreme example, dyslexia causes people to make insanely stupid errors, even though they may be very smart and hard working. There really is such a thing as an "it" for a given field of work, and if you don't have it, no amount of explanation/instruction will help you. I've witnessed this many times - some people are just not cut out for business, art, X, whatever. And I thought that guy was a classic. Barry "cut" him - on dvxuser - and was right to do so.

David Jimerson said:
Ironically, your post is one of the most counterproductive and destructive posts I've seen here at DVXuser -- saying people should disregard this article is SPECTACULARLY BAD advice. And I do have some trouble buying that you didn't post it to be contrarian.
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As I said, I think you must have misunderstood my post, and I tried to correct that. And I hope that this statement by you is based on that misunderstanding, because if not, I'd be pretty hurt and discouraged. I poured a lot of time - that I don't have a ton of - into dvxuser, giving my best in order to help make this a thoughtful and interesting community and I hope I am making a true and original contribution. If I thought you meant this seriously, rather than based on a misunderstanding, I would have to say I would regret writing in this thread at all, and I would feel I need to cut back on my participation in this community. I am sincere, and have no interest in being a contrarian - but if it so happens that my opinion differs drastically from the majority, should I feel inhibited in expressing it to the best of my ability?
 
OldCorpse, your argument is so full of holes that your intellectual integrity is in question. Your reply to my opening questions likewise were full of holes, topped with condescension. So, ironically, I'm encouraged by your advice --- to give up talking to you.

To the rest I say this:

1. Yeah, this article is kind of weird. I would not be surprised if someone got fired for these things, without the courtesy of being handed this article as a warning.

2. These are general skills in responsibility and consideration, applicable to any job. OldCorpse says that different people are fit for different jobs and maybe you just aren't cut out for the film industry. That's kind of true and kind of misleading. It's true that people seem like they're born for some things and not others, but that is on a completely different spectrum: introvert or extrovert; detail oriented or not; and maybe: do you like construction, medicine, the arts, or something else? But the infractions addressed in the article are about character. If you're doing the bad things in this article, not only are you a bad production assistant, but you'll also be a bad accountant, gym coach, or salesperson.

3. The more candidates you have, the faster you can fire people. If you're Warner Brothers, with 100 people waiting in line, go ahead and just fire the guy. The Devil Wears Prada shows us that other prestigious industries can be just as cutthroat, too. But if you're Joe College shooting a $500 student film, you might have to try to rehabilitate your "crew" (who's likely a friend working for free) and make the most of it.

4. This is the second time I've seen article about film set courtesy in the past few months. I've also heard other stories about how this generation of Americans is overall less disciplined by their parents. So maybe even Warner Brothers feels like its old way of winnowing out good candidates won't work, because there are fewer good candidates. And if Warner Brothers is feeling the squeeze, then the mid-level television and commercial productions are feeling it even moreso. And that is more who I thought this article was aimed at: mid- and low-level film productions, not a top Hollywood multimillion-dollar film set.

5. Although I think it's fine to fire someone on the spot for these infractions (but I'm more of a three-strikes-and-you're-out kind of guy), I disagree with OldCorpse that disseminating this information is harmful. That's all too Farenheit 451 for me. Regardless of where you're at, there's always a chance that a reinjection of the truth will nudge you in the right direction. And if, like OldCorpse says, someone takes this as an exhaustive list of do's and don'ts, and anything off the list is therefore okay, then they still haven't gotten it (yet). What I take away from this is sort of an outline that emerges. You can try to teach someone generalities like: look for ways to help, consider others' needs, etc. Or you can spray them with a few very specific things: if you see spilled coffee, clean it up, even if you didn't do it; put your phone on silent; etc. The latter way actually helps people learn more. If they're trying to learn, they would naturally try to extrapolate the general principle from the specifics.

6. Even people who have demonstrated these desirable behaviors can benefit from reading the article. Just like the athlete gets from the coach who tells him things he already knows, like, "Come on! Do it! Tighten up those elbows" (or whatever) so I have often benefited from someone reminding me of things I already know.

7. I don't take this article necessarily as something to hand out on a set. In fact I might take it as all the more excuse to just fire you on the spot. Hey, there are all these articles out now and you're still doing this thing. Now you really have no excuse. You're fired!
 
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The "it" is definitely not genetic. Anyone who has graduated high school has the genetic intelligence to become a great director.

edited to add: I haven't even read the thread. The article seemed absolutely correct for on set behavior. I can't figure out what anyone is arguing because of the walls of text. Less is more.
 
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Ok I read through the posts now. First I'll say that the article is good. I read "The Set Production Assistant's Handbook" when I was 14, a year before I started working on sets, and it was entirely helpful. This article is similar. The article is aimed to help entry level people to understand how film culture works. Nobody is going to magically know things like how it's a faux pas to sit down on set if you're a PA.

Second I'll say that OldCorpse's perspective is completely valuable and interesting for me to read. The fact that it's getting down voted is really pathetic. How dare he disagree with a stickied post, oh god!

Allow me to try to reconcile the two perspectives here. An exaggerated version of OldCorpse's point of view is what Tibetan Buddhists do to find the new Dalai Lama. After the Dalai Lama dies, high ranking officials wait a few years and then go looking for a super young child who they believe is now the Dalai Lama. If those children were to be given cheat-sheets for how to pass the tests, we would potentially choose the wrong kid. Similarly, most people would rather marry someone who was naturally charming instead of someone who had to read a million dating books.

On the flip side, not everyone making a paycheck in Hollywood needs to be the Dalai Lama and sometimes we just need competent PA's to make coffee and not bother anyone.
 
combatentropy said:
4. This is the second time I've seen article about film set courtesy in the past few months. I've also heard other stories about how this generation of Americans is overall less disciplined by their parents. So maybe even Warner Brothers feels like its old way of winnowing out good candidates won't work, because there are fewer good candidates. And if Warner Brothers is feeling the squeeze, then the mid-level television and commercial productions are feeling it even moreso. And that is more who I thought this article was aimed at: mid- and low-level film productions, not a top Hollywood multimillion-dollar film set.
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“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers..”

Socrates (469 – 399 BC)
 
The article was posted in 2015 but still makes lot of sense. It was a real good read and a must for a beginner like me.
 
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