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When I worked on Scary Movie 5, I was the villain, but I was also Snoop Dogg’s stunt double (because we look exactly alike). My dressing room was right down the hall from his.

My dressing room was practical. I had a few personal items. Most of the room was empty or occupied by work stuff. I could go to the snack table and bring in whatever food I wanted. They took good care of me, but it was not as nice as being at home.

I had to get there earlier than most of the other actors because of the extensive makeup and other rigamarole. I was getting rigged up to dangle from the ceiling or put on a costume or a series of masks.

One morning, I got a peek at the assistants loading up Snoop’s dressing room…it was huge. He had a big TV with two video game consoles, an ice bucket of fancy waters and energy drinks, food plates, couches, and more. When he arrived, he came with an entourage in a cloud of weed smoke. Wow, what an upgrade!

In making movies, there’s a lot of waiting as shots are set up and everything is prepared for the actors. While I was sitting in my dressing room waiting, I realized that 20′ away was Snoop also waiting. He had to wait just like me. And just like me, his dressing room was not as nice as being at home.

I get to fly first-class more now than I did then, but it changed the way I looked at first-class people. For some reason, I thought they were sitting there going “heck yeah! I’m flying first class! I get free champagne!”

I started to realize they are in first-class because they fly a depressing amount or because they have a more expensive life.

I started to realize that it is nicer to live like the rich and famous, but day-to-day it’s not so much of a game changer. The people in first-class are still sitting there trapped in a seat that’s probably not as nice as their earth life. The people driving Lamborghinis still have a weird coffee smell in their cup holders.

I started to realize that as more of the mundane tasks are taken away, the more responsibility we have to spend our time on developing great entertainment.

This is a challenge we develop as we find more and more success. Not only are we setting up an expectation for continued success, but we have more space to create more, faster, better. We are still at the same level, though. We’re still dealing with life on its terms.

I guess the main takeaways I had from this epiphany were…

• Learn gratitude now, because life will not look that different when we have more. If we’re not grateful now, we won’t automatically be then.
• Success is not going to show up as a victorious moment.
• Success is not the end. It’s not even a point in time. It’s a mindset.
• Great work and success will lead to more great work, so we’d better enjoy the work.

Great entertainment cannot be created if there are haters. Haters have loud voices that overwhelm the satisfied crowd. As long as a hater has a megaphone, the rest of the audience won’t be able to get the good stuff.

Now that everyone’s on a global stage, we have access to billions of unwanted opinions.

Haters aren’t real people

Haters are roles that we assign to people. Sometimes they’re roles that people accept for themselves. Roles are not people. They are a simplistic lens to view a whole person. They are objectifications of people. So, to kill a hater, we don’t have to kill a person, we have to kill our labeling of people.

Kill a hater just the same way you kill Marty McFly – go after the parents. Haterism has three parents:

1. Validation seeking
2. Selfishness
3. Negativity Bias

1. Get entrenched in the mission

We get creative validation from our mission, not from our audience or from strangers. Our fuel comes from doing great things in the big picture, not from individual projects or versions of a product.

Personal validation is something else altogether. It’s an umbrella over all. If we’re letting negative comments affect whether we feel lovable, there’s some major backtracking to do. Therapy and stuff, dude! It’s in common parlance to say that someone “hurt our feelings,” but our feelings are our own and are not in the hands of critics, let alone our loved ones.

When we personally are not safe to exist, we can’t create great stuff.

2. Be Generous

Give more. Find people who need help and serve them. This is how we started creating and it’s how we’ll continue. Definitely, we need to take care of ourselves, but then go forward and shift the spotlight from our own preservation to the improvement of the world.

3. Appreciate bad brains

We gotta look at, and accept our negativity bias. Haters are loud because we amplify them. This is natural and common.

When we’re driving down the street, there are a lot of things we could hit with the car. They’re all moving fast and diverse in color and size. So much stuff we could give our focus. It would be so dramatic and interesting to crash. The road itself is monotone and seems to not move at all. Yet, we focus on the road (most of the time) because — even though we know it’s not as engaging, it’s the important thing to keep us moving forward.

Take a peek behind the curtain

It doesn’t really matter what justification people have for making critiques of our work, but there is justification. There’s a good reason for them to make remarks from their standpoint. They have complicated lives and important perspectives. They have their mission and we have our missions and I am driven by the idea that my mission is one of the most important missions in the world, so I can’t slow down because they’re doing their thing.

I’m not trained as a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Get legal advice for contracts. I’m speaking from experience about the contracts I’ve seen for friends, clients, and myself. Most of these contracts are between an individual and a corporation.

Many entertainment pros I know think of contracts all wrong.

A contract is a love letter, not a declaration of war

This is the #1 problem with many entertainment pros getting into contracts. It’s not about the contrast, it’s about the clarity.

They’re called “agreements” for a reason. Contracts are an incredible step into trust and deeper collaboration.

Often we get this idea that we want everyone to be on the same page automatically. Hopefully everyone has “good” intentions and wants to do the “right thing.” We read each other’s minds and nobody does anything “amorally.” If all this stuff is not true, then we need a contract in order to draw the line for our enemy and prepare for war.

I assume people, in general, are trying to do the same things.

People want to be kind and make the world better whenever possible.

Most of the time, concepts of what is kind and a better world are mostly the same. But the actions and situations that lead to kindness and better-worldness are relative based on perspectives.

A set decorator might think that getting themselves paid a lot is better for the world because they’ll be able to do better work, while a theater company might think they need to save as much money as possible to put into making more great work. So, the contract is a great opportunity for both parties to work together to define how best to make a better world.

If a contract is thorough and clear, it frees everyone up to work together without questioning the scope, direction, distribution, and transaction of the work. It makes the relationship more fun and more motivational.

I won’t see you in court.

I have never gone to court or arbitration over a contract, and I’ve dealt with a lot of them. Usually a legal battle is the last resort. It’s annoying and expensive.

On the other hand, I have brought up contract points a lot as a way to remind everyone of our goals. These are simple conversations and a splendid way to get back into alignment.

Take some time and get it right

Because we think of contracts as conflicts, we often try to rush through the process. By doing this, we aren’ setting ourselves up for all the awesomeness possible. If we think of them as love letters, we wanna get everything in there!

I had a lot of roommates in my young adulthood.

There were so many conflicts with my first roommates because we had different ideas of what home was supposed to be. We had different ideas of our responsibilities. After going through the fights and the resentments and the whatnot a bunch of times, I learned to start communicating upfront about what these expectations were. After I had discussed with my roommates how long dishes can stay in the sink, we might not have both liked the rules of our agreement, but we didn’t have to revisit again. Our collective home could then be more sanctuary-ized.

So

Yes, a good contract will protect us in the case of a lawsuit, but more importantly it will make our work better.

Examples of agreements i’ve used. This is not legal advice.

Personally, I avoid transactional relationships. I don’t do favors that are owed later. Either I want to do something for someone or I don’t.

Professionally, I try to do as many things to help others as possible. Then, when the work gets bigger, more special, or impacts my life more; it becomes transactional. I’m trading for something. Usually money.

I love giving as much as I can and I truly love helping people achieve more of what they want, but…

help is a dirty word.

We don’t want help. Getting help is admitting a weakness. If we’re going to be respected, we’re going to need independence.

Be a bonus

Offering help is often rejected, so it is sometimes more productive to offer to…

• chip in
• add to
• be a part of
• gift
• donate

If we recognize people are doing good things and we want to add on to what they’re already doing, it’s not a challenge to their capabilities. It’s a compliment to their capabilities.

Being on the other side works gang-busters

Requesting help has the opposite effect. It can be one of the most effective ways to START a conversation. When we’re reaching out to a booker, publisher, media person, or other gate keeper, sometimes it’s better to ask them directly for help than to make an offer to them.

The help people like giving is not simple

When requesting help:

1. The request is best if it’s specific to that person. What special things does that person have that would especially qualify them to help. Folks like feeling useful for their special mix of who they are.
2. We need to show that the help will be valuable to us. People don’t like spending time with no result.
3. If the helpers don’t know us, we need to show that we have a mission they like.
4. Make the assistance easy to provide. If help can be boiled down to a single yes / no question, that’s baller.
5. The help needs to have an obvious result. Eg: “I think your feedback could make my mom love me again. Could you please tell me what you think of this holiday card?”
6. Ask for something unusual. It doesn’t have to be weird, but if you’re asking Richard Branson for money for anything, you’ll probably be outta luck.

You know what else?! That Mia Dolan La La Land! And Rabbit from Eight Mile! Yes I said it! I’m controversial.

It seems like we have one shot at the big stuff in life because our shots are truly rare. Of all the attempts we make, of all the opportunities we try to open up for ourselves; many of them don’t lead anywhere. Many of them don’t even have the chance to lead anywhere. Although our shots are rare…

We have more than one shot

First impressions mean little

Maybe they mean something, but it’s more helpful to think of them as meaning little. A gatekeeper can write someone off because of a bad first impression, but that doesn’t mean there are no more impressions to make. Remember…

1. Making a good first impression means presenting relaxed confidence. It’s hard to do that if we think it’s our only chance
2. We must never give up in showing more value to our people.

Chris Ruggiero won’t stop

Dude got on the Ellen show because he got a shot to send a video in to the producers. They said a polite, “not yet.” He sent in new videos every single month for five years. Bingo

He wanted to get on the James Corden show. It didn’t work. One new video shot from his living room each week for a year. Bingo

He wrote to every agent in the college market and tried to get them to take him on. Nada. He paid his own way to go to a college booking convention. Showcased. The agents approached him. Bingo

Get better

A crucial thing about Ruggiero’s pursuit is he got better. He learned what his gatekeepers didn’t want and gave them what they did want. This is what we have to do. We don’t just continually try to clarify our value, we also try to add value. If I really feel that a certain publisher is right for me, I don’t just have to convince them, I have to work more to be perfect for them.

As we decide which directions we want to grow, we might discover that that gatekeeper isn’t actually guarding the treasure we want. Or, we might focus on that gatekeeper and grow myopically toward their gate.

Make more first impressions

When first impressions mean less to us, it makes it easier to make more of them. Let’s get bold and reach out to people who might not want what we have now, but may be able to communicate which directions we can grow.

You have nuance not nuisance

Why would a gatekeeper want us to be better? Why would a gatekeeper give us another chance? Because gatekeepers want something. They want to find really awesome creators. They NEED ‘EM! Gatekeepers are praying right now for an email for something awesome that is an easy yes. If a gatekeeper can see our fight, and can see progress, and can see that we’re listening to them, their dreams come true.

I liked Hamilton, La La Land, and Eight Mile by the way. I hope you give me another chance to prove my good taste.

It’s easy to get caught up in all the technology of today. I love human advancement! The thing about human advancement that matters is humans. We care about humans. We think like humans. We assume other humans think like humans. We even assume doors think like humans (“that door just shut on me”). We want objects – animate and inanimate – to think the way we do. We want them to have stories.

The promise of technology is to connect us more to humanity, to make humanity better, and to foster more humanity.

When we’re thinking about how to adapt entertainment to the higher-tech world, it isn’t about pushing more tech on people. It’s also not about avoiding or burying tech. It’s about remembering the promise of tech and fulfilling that promise. JJ Abrams is so successful because he uses modern movie making technology to amplify his core interest in people.

No matter how we feel about the aspects of humanity that we see, social media shows us more of humanity.

When we’re letting people know about the entertainment we’re making, or even when we’re making the entertainment, let’s not forget. People are not coming to consume content, production value or the latest software… they’re coming to consume our “souls.”

People keep asking me if I plan to do Boobietrap (or something similar) online. We are not planning on it. I’m not pursuing solo shows online either.

I like killing

I perform to destroy! I love taking the audience on an incredible journey and giving them insanely good entertainment beyond anything they’ve seen before. I like dropping jaws, surprising and delighting. It took me years to develop things that can have that impact. It isn’t me that’s awesome, it’s the things I’ve worked to create (alone or in collaboration) that take audiences by storm.

I love it. I don’t like trying new things in front of an audience. I don’t like getting applause or laughs for a new bit. I like owning the moment completely.

Gotta hit the boards

The work is in trying things out, developing them, experimenting and refining. I don’t enjoy trying things out, but I love the results – just like I don’t enjoy sleeping, but I love being not-tired.

Gotta know the medium

Being a legendary entertainer requires deliberate exploitation of resources and limitations. A great tennis player is incredible because they use their energy, skills, time, and mind to do everything within the rules to win. Same with a great comedian.

A fishnet for a sock puppet

Scot Nery’s Boobietrap was created week after week in an underground venue in Los Angeles, and it couldn’t have happen anywhere else in the same way. When we moved, we looked for a similar venue and the show was built around what was available.

It wasn’t made to have comfy chairs, or clean bathrooms. It definitely wasn’t made to be live streamed. It would lose many of its great qualities…

• exclusivity
• tribalism
• environment
• drinks
• intimacy
• dead air

and it wouldn’t have the possible great qualities of online shows…

• intense interaction
• chat
• control of the show
• production value
• detail
• seamless digital experience

If I did make an online show, it would be from scratch and it would take me a long time. Maybe I will, but not today.

You can read more of my ideas about streaming shows on my blog and imagine what I’d create. That, I’m sure, will be more entertaining than me getting on a video chat with you to juggle for a while.

Amazon wanted to be the most trusted source of reviews. They wanted customers to come to them first to understand what people are really saying about products. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t what their competitors were doing.

Other e-commerce vendors only wanted to share favorable reviews because people buy things with favorable reviews.

Amazon wasn’t going for the cheap shallow branding of “we have good things, buy from us.” They were going for a deeper relationship. “We will always help you with your purchasing decisions even if it’s not good for us.”

As a result, a 5 star rating on a product actually means something on Amazon, and it was hard-earned trust.

We can be pretty dumb

As freelancers and small businesses in entertainment, we often see the purchase point, but we don’t see the relationship that the customer has had with us leading up to the purchase. We don’t see all the times they’ve noticed us or heard about us. We don’t hear about all the things that remind them of us. We don’t know what history they’ve had with our competition, so it all seems like alchemy.

This alchemical feeling means we have no real agency. We got paid for our work by luck, and so we pursue new promotions waiting for that same luck.

Check out someone bigger

An easy exercise for exposing how much trust matters is to look at someone who we think is better than us in our field. How does this person or company appear to us? How many hundreds of times have we seen them? How many times have they consistently proven to deliver?

We don’t have to worry that they are “better” than us because our customers probably don’t have the same relationship with this “better” company than ours. This dig into our trust process demonstrates that our concept of value doesn’t come from one email blast, one website, or one instagram post. We trust that Mercedes Benz is a luxury brand because of a lifetime of indoctrination.

Channel the Amazon approach

Amazon treated reviews as a tool for its users. What tools do we supply to our potential customers? What services do we offer, not to drive sales, not to get fans, but to get gatekeepers one step closer to trusting us? How can we be the very first (and last) stop for our fans when they want to do something?

It’s much nicer to have someone in a park say “here’s a shady umbrella to relax under” than “listen to my music and you can buy some through 4 different download sources!”

Yes, it’s less direct. Yes it’s more work.

But it is work that translates into trust. It’s fun to provide good service, and its actually desirable.

In the past, the only tribe you could market to was “local.” That still works great for brick and mortar businesses, but as more is revealed about the lockdown (at least in the US) it seems we are not going to go local with entertainment any time soon.

Having a focused, small and local tribe is great. Being the #1 rock cover band in Buzzard, OK is way easier than being the #1 rock cover band in OK, which is even easier than being the most OKAY rock cover band in the world.

It can be tempting to try to be a big fish in the big pond when our small pond is taken away, but its better if we find a puddle. A fish will not thrive in the puddle at first, but when it rains, the fish will know every aspect of that puddle and be able to expand to bigger, pondier areas nearby.

Okay, too metaphorical

Find a small tribe and be the #1 choice in that small tribe. Let’s try…

• Being the best standup comedian for people who like reenacting wars
• Having the best burlesque show for adults who play minecraft?
• Making the only video game for UCLA professors?

Fred Armisen made a comedy show for drummers. Slipknot made a band for whoever that’s for (not as small an audience as I’d hope).

From what I know of badass entertainers, it’s unlikely that we’ll focus too small. Its far more unlikely that we’ll broadcast too big.

This is especially important when we’re making new projects and new work after mucho other success. It is near impossible to come out with something as awesome as what we’ve created over decades for a big audience at the same level. Let’s make something that’s big for a small group even though we can’t go local.

Pitch meetings are not what they used to be. In the world of video chat, there are new opportunities and new challenges.

Geography be damned

No driving, no flying. We can now have 12 meetings in a day around the world. We don’t need a conference room or a fancy venue.

The rules have reset

We don’t need the same people to be there. Not every meeting needs to be the same length. We can ask the big questions, hangup and return for round #2. Things can be more casual. Things can be more succinct. Following up digitally isn’t as abrupt as it would be with an IRL pitch.

The stakes are lower

If we cut the crap out of our meetings, they don’t need to be so long. We don’t need to fill up our schedules with all the side-effects of IRL meetings. It makes our time less rare and each meeting less important. Personable people benefit strongly from being collaborative under these conditions. Rigid people might have some issues with it.

Solutions get more creative, and problems get solved with more flow when the stakes are low.

Overcome the downsides and we’re the heros

There are a bunch of problems with doing pitches online, but when we make those problems disappear, we become magicians that folks actually want to be around.

• Newness – Since this technology and way of doing biz is new, we gotta practice a lot. Let’s practice the way a ventriloquist practices, not to make our adeptness more obvious, but to make all the normal stuff less obvious.
• Lag – The slowness of video & audio, mixed with the fact that my speakers will mute while I’m talking, can lead to a very stilted conversation. It can also lead to a feeling of brashness. The best way to combat this is with extra tongue biting and extremely deliberate talking. When we start on a statement, follow it all the way thru to the end, clearly and quickly. Slowing down or pausing could be seen as a cue for another party to speak, which leads to a verbal pile-up.
• Apathy – Because of the casual nature, it’s easy to take someone’s behavior as aloof at best or, more likely, lifeless. There is no over-doing it with attention to detail, preparation, and intention. We can try to deliver double the courtesy we would share IRL and it will probably still come across as half.
• Slug-likeness – Being in front of the camera takes the wind out of our sails. Our audience can feel that wind, so let’s amp it up. Enthusiasm is generous.
• Tech Support – Watching someone try to figure out how zoom works can feel like doing tech support for an 80 year old. Watching a musician run their own mix on stage is the worst. I’m doing several zoom calls per day and I still have moments where I’m squinting at the camera, trying to poke at my screen. This is horrible body language. The biggest thing we can do is get physical. Can we change our powerpoint to an easel presentation that we do in front of the camera? Can we use physical props and our body to demonstrate things? Can we send materials later instead of trying to bring them up on screen?
• Soullessness – Because so many micro expressions and subtle cues are removed from the interaction, the human connection fades away. Being more physical, more candid, and more positive all contribute to a deeper connection.
• Loneliness – Again the disconnection. The feeling that we’re talking to a camera and not a person. Get our faces close to the screen for more intimacy. Look directly at the camera when talking if possible. Soften our expression and nod silently when someone’s talking. Take notes on paper instead of on a keyboard. Listen a little bit longer than they talk.
• ADHD Paradise – There is very little reason for us to pay full attention to the screen and it’s exhausting to do so. If we pour ourselves into these meetings, it will initiate reciprocity. If we focus on empathy and generosity, it will give our co-meeters something worth their attention.

These other quickies I wrote might help too…

3 Qualities That DIE In A Live Stream

Livestream… But Entertaining

It’s such a mindfuck to expect an audience to do something. Trying to figure out motivations in an ever-changing world is as dependable as meteorology.

We’re seeing how this works for the quarantine right now. Expecting big changes for a big collection of people – the world’s population. People are not predictable. The twists and turns it’s taken have been incredible to me.

How do we figure out whether people will do what we want them to do ( eg: cry / laugh ) at the right times?

Focus on the small

We gotta focus on small audiences for small time periods and experiment vigilantly… or do tried-and-true things for big audiences, but make small improvements. Many creatives want to do big new things for big audiences and it’s just not a winning game.

I’ve written about how people don’t want good stuff. And sometimes it seems like there’s no way around it. We have something great to offer that’s great exactly because it’s new! It hasn’t been done before, so it’s not wanted. It’s not even understood.

When people are comparing our services to those of others, that’s a marketing challenge, but when they aren’t even looking for anything like what we’re offering, that’s something completely different. As the world of entertainment is changing, we can offer bad versions of old things, or we can harness the modern powers of everything and offer something amazing and new.

My favorite book is short but dense and intense. “Propaganda” by Edward Bernays is a tour of his genius marketing techniques from 1928. It’s scary what he did back then. Marketing has advanced even more today, but even then, there was no way you’d know you were a target of some of his techniques. The book made me realize I will never be too smart to be fooled by corporations or governments.

Besides being a cautionary tale, it’s also a peek into the deep empathy of a marketer.

Bernays was hired to sell a certain brand of pianos, and he had to figure out how. He saw there were many people who might like a piano but didn’t want them. Not just this brand, ALL brands.

The major reason: pianos are big and people didn’t have room for them. That’s a good reason to not buy a piano. It wasn’t practical and it wasn’t even a longing. It was a non-starter.

Bernays not only discovered the cause, he also figured out what would encourage people to buy them. And it was a million miles from a good magazine ad.

He enlisted a group of leading architects to introduce a new trend in home building: music rooms. He got it printed in design publications, and home builders convinced owners of the new trend.

“The music room will be accepted because it has been made the thing. And the man or woman who has a music room, or has arranged a corner of the parlor as a musical corner, will naturally think of buying a piano. It will come to him as his own idea.”

There is no going to far…

…if we’re determined to serve people something awesome. How do we…

1. reach our audience,
2. understand what they need,
3. understand how they need it,
4. understand why they don’t see it,
5. understand what they do see,
6. understand how they talk,
7. understand what they trust,
8. speak to them in a way that leads them to our great thing