October 19, 2010 @ 2:23 a.m.
People who haven’t been reading here for long probably have missed some of the things I said months ago about how much there is that I dislike in the entertainment industry. I have no need for or interest in being accepted or paid attention to by people who are willing to call a woman sushi, especially once she has made it clear that those kinds of names are offensive and unwelcome.
When I say that there are bullies in Hollywood, I’m looking at the overall destructive impact of their behavior, not at them keeping me out of selling screenplays or anything like that. There’s no amount of money that any of those harassing people or businesses could pay me that would get me to work for or with any of them the way they are now.
I think that’s an important distinction; I don’t feel at all bitter at being shut out of Hollywood or any part of the harassing segment of the entertainment industry. I have found almost nothing to enjoy about my experience of getting to know that industry even from afar and my feeling for a long time has been “When am I going to escape it altogether? When is this going to be done?”
I saw a bumper sticker on a car a few months ago that said “Hell was full so I came back.” That perfectly sums up my feelings about my experience thus far with that crowd.
Any of the people in that business who think that I am unhappily excluded by them instead of continuing to be both disillusioned and nauseated by their actions are deluding themselves. That’s the truth, and they cement that truth more completely every day.
The great thing about being really talented is that it’s real; I don’t need other people’s admiration to confirm my abilities for me. There are an infinite number of careers that would make me happy, I’ve always said that I never wanted to be a full-time writer and that’s still true, and I’ll never spend a day in mourning over not having a Hollywood career. In fact, if I can keep myself from becoming insufferably self-satisfied in my cheerful rejection of Hollywood the way it is now, it’ll be a near-superhuman feat of spiritual self-actualization.
It’s not just how awful the people in the business are; the fact that I would have to piece together every project I ever tried to work on so that I wasn’t taking any money from businesses that I didn’t like would be a headache on its own. The sexual harassment and all the corruption make it even less likely that I’m going to trouble myself to find out how I might get something like a screenplay sold or produced.
I lived 33 years before I ever wrote a TV scene. Even though a lot of people, including writing teachers, had told me that I was a good writer, I had never tried to do that kind of writing before. I turned out to be good at writing drama. There wasn’t one scene or set of scenes for Friday Night Lights that it took me more than a couple of hours to write, and it only took that long because I had to take the time to write it down instead of just being able to laser it onto the page with my eyes. All of those scenes threw themselves down on the page almost exactly the way everybody who’s read them read them. Every scene started with one sentence in my mind and writing the rest was easier than pulling the end of a piece of yarn from a skein of yarn and watching the whole thing unravel.
As middle age lurches toward me at an ever-increasing rate, I have even less interest in writing drama for immature people than I do in living in the drama that they want to create around me and around themselves.
What’s that phrase that people used to use in dating? “Call me when you grow up.” That’s how I feel about ever working in the entertainment industry.
It’s not my loss; I’ve never had any doubt about that at all.
There isn’t one word on this page that isn’t true. If I could get this essay notarized for truthfulness, I would.
Copyright L. Kochman October 19, 2010
People who haven’t been reading here for long probably have missed some of the things I said months ago about how much there is that I dislike in the entertainment industry. I have no need for or interest in being accepted or paid attention to by people who are willing to call a woman sushi, especially once she has made it clear that those kinds of names are offensive and unwelcome.
When I say that there are bullies in Hollywood, I’m looking at the overall destructive impact of their behavior, not at them keeping me out of selling screenplays or anything like that. There’s no amount of money that any of those harassing people or businesses could pay me that would get me to work for or with any of them the way they are now.
I think that’s an important distinction; I don’t feel at all bitter at being shut out of Hollywood or any part of the harassing segment of the entertainment industry. I have found almost nothing to enjoy about my experience of getting to know that industry even from afar and my feeling for a long time has been “When am I going to escape it altogether? When is this going to be done?”
I saw a bumper sticker on a car a few months ago that said “Hell was full so I came back.” That perfectly sums up my feelings about my experience thus far with that crowd.
Any of the people in that business who think that I am unhappily excluded by them instead of continuing to be both disillusioned and nauseated by their actions are deluding themselves. That’s the truth, and they cement that truth more completely every day.
The great thing about being really talented is that it’s real; I don’t need other people’s admiration to confirm my abilities for me. There are an infinite number of careers that would make me happy, I’ve always said that I never wanted to be a full-time writer and that’s still true, and I’ll never spend a day in mourning over not having a Hollywood career. In fact, if I can keep myself from becoming insufferably self-satisfied in my cheerful rejection of Hollywood the way it is now, it’ll be a near-superhuman feat of spiritual self-actualization.
It’s not just how awful the people in the business are; the fact that I would have to piece together every project I ever tried to work on so that I wasn’t taking any money from businesses that I didn’t like would be a headache on its own. The sexual harassment and all the corruption make it even less likely that I’m going to trouble myself to find out how I might get something like a screenplay sold or produced.
I lived 33 years before I ever wrote a TV scene. Even though a lot of people, including writing teachers, had told me that I was a good writer, I had never tried to do that kind of writing before. I turned out to be good at writing drama. There wasn’t one scene or set of scenes for Friday Night Lights that it took me more than a couple of hours to write, and it only took that long because I had to take the time to write it down instead of just being able to laser it onto the page with my eyes. All of those scenes threw themselves down on the page almost exactly the way everybody who’s read them read them. Every scene started with one sentence in my mind and writing the rest was easier than pulling the end of a piece of yarn from a skein of yarn and watching the whole thing unravel.
As middle age lurches toward me at an ever-increasing rate, I have even less interest in writing drama for immature people than I do in living in the drama that they want to create around me and around themselves.
What’s that phrase that people used to use in dating? “Call me when you grow up.” That’s how I feel about ever working in the entertainment industry.
It’s not my loss; I’ve never had any doubt about that at all.
There isn’t one word on this page that isn’t true. If I could get this essay notarized for truthfulness, I would.
Copyright L. Kochman October 19, 2010