Christopher Ming's Blog

There’s this moment, right before stumbling off your board, where you ask yourself, “Really? Did I have to try and get fancy right here right now? Were the potential flair points really worth the mouthful of gravel I’m about to eat?”

Then you’re falling.

Then you’re meeting asphalt.

Mucho gusto.
Igualmente.

Tucking, rolling, sliding, anything you can do to keep the wounds surface-level only, because you’d rather not test the limits of your paltry health insurance.

I throw in a prayer, too: please dear sweet Jesus I hope nobody saw that…

“Hey man, you alright?” a man on the sidewalk asked, trying hard not to laugh too loud. Failing to do so.

“Gotta love it,” I replied, my voice suave and steady as I scrapped myself off the ground, and chased my board which was skittering down the street.

In the past I avoided such moments by skating solely at night, when no one could see my bumbling. Or if they did, they wouldn’t recognize my face in the daylight, and would be unable to banish me back to the darkness where I belonged with looks of contempt. There is something embarrassing about being a 25-year-old man-child putzing around on a skateboard — if you’re skating at that age, there’s this expectation that you worked out the kinks when you were young and foolish enough to believe transportation on a plank resting atop four wheels was a valid mode of transportation.

Except I started skating at 24, only after I moved out to Los Angeles. So when I see the young and fearless skaters, attacking the street or vert or their new trick, I can’t help but resent the little assholes and their 20-year head start.

I started my Hollywood writing career the same time I started skating. My first lesson was, whatever you do, don’t admit you want to write. I interned with a management company, and kinda sorta fibbed about my desire to get into management and being an agent, so executives wouldn’t pass me off as just “another writer.” When people asked why I moved to Los Angeles, I gave pat answers: for the weather, a change of pace, etc. I pursued writing like a prepubescent teen pursues masturbation: alone, in secret, with hands furiously working in the dark. Looking back, this might have stifled my creativity but in the long run it’s not a bad move. Strange as it is to move 3,000 miles and not admit the real reason why, it’s a chore to distinguish yourself from the other millions of 25-year-olds with a whole lot of aspiration and dream, but no credits.

The more skating I watched, the more I noticed that what distinguished a skater from the pack wasn’t their execution of this trick or that move, but how they expressed themselves with their skating. The skaters who drew my attention were the ones who said something every time they stepped on the board. Because once everyone reached a certain level, they all possessed the same arsenal of tools at their disposal, and it was how they used those tools that distinguished themselves from the rest. It was more than transportation, more than a spectacle. It was art.

The only way to reach that level is admitting you’re going to take it seriously. That means pursuing your art in the daylight, and being willing to be judged by your work. You have to put it out there. You have to perform, right in the middle of the road, where anyone can see you fall.

Categories: hustle, ridicule, skating
by Chris
Tagged: art, beginnings, hollywood, hustling, skating
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You could tell he was a best-selling author the moment he stepped on the elevator. It was in the smile: the smug smile of success of someone who needs success to smile. If that didn’t tip you off, then the collared shirt with his name embroidered over his right tit and the words “Best-Selling Author” embroidered over his right tit did.

His beard resembled a furry cat, a tawny feline that perched onto his chin years ago and never left. Instead, the pussiness seeped into his pores and oozed throughout his persona: the entitlement in his strut, the condescension in his tone – he was a self-satisfied pussy alright, content with a belly rub, maybe a broken-winged butterfly to bat around. Behind every. last. word. was an inner sigh of contentment. An, “Ahhh… it’s me, bitches!” right as a Swizz Beatz beat dropped and looped endlessly in his head.

He was the kind of person you’d meet at wine ‘n cheese parties. He’d listen politely to whatever you said, nodding too often, after every. last. word. because that’s what he learned in his interpersonal communications class. Except the glazed look in his eyes and the superior smile itching to break out over his face gave the game up, and finally you’d pop the unavoidable question: so what do you do?

And he’d one-up your every utterance with his trump card, his bitch of spades:

“Me?” dripped with false modesty and fake surprise. As if he’s never heard the question before. “I’m a best-selling author.”

Then you nod and say something to the effect of “how fabulous,” though you may never have used the word “fabulous” in your life, before sipping the box wine and nibbling on some stinky Cabrales. You’d re-read the words on his shirt.

“I never would have guessed,” you’d say.

Promote, market, sell yourself. You gots to do it if you’re going to make it, yeah? Chalk one up to naivety, but there’s got to be some finesse to it, a balance between creating buzz and hawking yourself on the street corner with the name “Kandy Kane” screened onto your booty shorts. The line’s a blur at the best of times, and a beer-goggled squiggle at the worst, when wearing a shirt with your resume embroidered on it is an acceptable practice in branding. Seems the line will continue getting fuzzier and fuzzier, too, as this generation emerges into the market, a generation brought up believing they are all unique snowflakes, and encouraged to tout the specificity of their successes and talents with alarming ease.

The problem with this is you’re only as good as the hype until you begin to believe it. At that point, it’s all downhill, because the second you start believing you “made it,” the drive that got you there begins to diminish. Humility and humbleness won’t blow you up like a youtube video gone viral, but they’ll continue pushing your talents long after any glim and glamour has worn off. And no matter how loud the marketing gimmick, it can’t match the volume of the art you make or the content you create. If these don’t say enough about you, nothing will.

Categories: authors, marketing, selling
by Chris
Tagged: entertainment business, Los Angeles, values
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What be the path now? Keep swinging for homeruns, hoping to get lucky with a feature written on spec? Because hey, even suckers eventually draw to that inside straight, long as they keep chasing it down. Or take a leaf from the electron’s notebook: hit it up with some “V” to the “IR,” and march down Easy Street, aka The Path of Least Resistance. You’ll hit different resistors, some in parallel, some in series, but at the end of the circuit at least you’ll find a paycheck and the stability of solid ground.

Option One is to stick to the Status Quo; there’s an appeal to keeping doing what’s doing. Stephen King said writing’s like sailing across the Atlantic in a bath tub, so why make waves? You’d be crazy to start drilling through porcelain unless you want to be a rub-a-glub-glub. Instead, keep on with the internships, hit up a few more companies, and earn experience points slow and steady – go for the level up by trolling though Mideel for Head Hunters, instead of setting off for Ruby Weapon. Give yourself cushion by waiting tables on the side, and most importantly, keep writing, keep producing art, keep pursuing what you came out to do. Some asshole’s going to hit the long shot – might as well be you.

Long Shots

1.       Nicholl Fellowship

2.       Zoetrope

3.       Slamdance

4.       Austin Film Festival

5.       Nantucket Film Festival

6.       Page

7.       Scriptapalooza

Option Two is setting sights on the writer’s room. It’d require a shift in gears, coming at the craft at a slightly different angle. The medium and the approach would change: writing specs for existing shows, and sending them off to get into a writing program, but you’re still writing. You could continue applying for internships, but the spectrum would be narrowed a smidgen: taking shots at production company jobs only, to get yourself a shot at the Writer’s Room by default of proximity, while trolling for an op as a writer’s assistant. And ‘cause the effort don’t earn a paycheck, it’d still require waiting tables on the side.

Writing Programs

1.       NBC Writers On the Verge

2.       Warner Brothers

3.       Fox Diversity Development

4.       ABC Program

5.       CBS Program

Finally, there’s the agent gig option. The Path of Lesser Resistance. Wouldn’t have to wait tables, for sure – not because you’d rake in the dough (no sir, not at ten dollars an hour) but because there’d be no time. Any writing completed would be done on the side, on weekends or during the day’s wee hours, and who knows if that’s enough time to produce anything of significance? Instead, time would be diverted towards building contacts and making connections, who you may or may not have anything to show, depending on if you’ve already done your work. If you haven’t, well, what separates you from the guy who only talks about his “great idea?”

Except – damn, there’s a huge draw to doing the agency route, because if you’re living in Los Angeles, you might as well live it. Be a part of the Hollywood machine. Attack that lifestyle.  Get a taste for it, live that hustle, at least for a little while, because isn’t that part of the experience? Even if becoming Agent Extraordinaire isn’t the end game, is it so wrong to sample the wares?

No simple choices, but plenty of ways to go wrong. Lots of diversions and distractions out there, and the only thing keeping the straight is paradigm: knowing what you want, and knowing you’re in the long haul to get it. Without it, it’s aimless wandering. With paradigm in place, you’ll wander, but at least you’ll drift in the right direction.

Categories: screenplay contests, turning points
by Chris
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Introduction

Got slapped with a backhand of information overload the other day. Felt like a shotgun shell of wisdom blasted in my direction – that can happen when you sit down and speak with two people who genuinely care about helping others with their careers – not easy to find. The information can be spliced two ways: paradigm and conceptual.

Paradigm

There aren’t sheets on the bed – that single observation caused the paradigm shift. Changed the way you looked at these last five months in Los Angeles.

It’s a queen-sized bed, graced with a twin-long flat sheet, the type made for foam dorm beds covered in stains incoming freshman pray are remnants of beer or (if it must be a bodily fluid,) vomit. The twin-long sheets is the color of white sanitation, the color of strait-jackets and hospital corridors. Instead of a duvet or comforter or a blanket, there’s a lime green 20-degree EMS mummy-style sleeping bag. Which is great for the surprisingly cold nights in Los Angeles, but doesn’t scream, “Welcome home!”

Because – and here’s the turn – this still isn’t home.

Even after schlepping shiz from coast to coast, at the heart of it, Los Angeles still wasn’t anything of permanence. The trucker hat hasn’t been hung, the proverbial roots haven’t snaked down like octopus tentacles into fake California Astroturf grass. Living in Los Angeles was no more than a pit stop: the car still rocks New York plates, a New York driver’s license still gets flashed to bouncers, and the I-9 forms still re-direct to the 518. Up to this point, this hasn’t been life, but rather, just another grand adventure, something to  pick up and walk away from after nine months. That’s been the lifestyle for years now: never committing to call any one locale “home,” or any one gig to call a career, and living light so the departure is never much more than a middle finger while EXITING STAGE LEFT.

This realization struck like a knuckle duster to a glass chin while discussing possible career steps with a friend. We debated the merits of getting into an agency program – getting paid minimum wage for a year or more as you’re groomed to become an agent-extraordinaire – but you’d come out with an arsenal of tools, and most importantly, the contacts of the future Misters and Misses Hollywood’s.

I scoffed at the idea.

Can’t do that for a year, I told him. I can’t possibly commit 18 months learning to become something I don’t want – no matter how great the reward.

He smiled at me. He said, “Why not?”

It’s too long of a commitment.

He said, “The best writers don’t stay writers their whole careers. They move onto other things: they direct, they produce, they become creative executives. If you want to look out for your long-term career, then the agency program and establishing all those contacts is a good plan. Because at some point, you’re going to need them. The cost maybe 18 months, but over the course of your career or your life, what’s 18 months?”

This friend, who a lifetime ago, was a professional dancer, said it took him 10 years of training to get to the point where he had the physical tools to walk into an audition and know he’d get the part. Compared to 10 years of grueling, physical training, what’s 18 months?

These last five months have been cute: poking a toe in the water, testing the temperature. But at some point, the time for dicking around is over: you’re either in or you’re out. You’re either running with the bulls or you’re standing safely on the sidelines. Except this ain’t no sprint, neither – only marathon-men make it in this business, while hot commodities are just flashes in the frying pan, dying out fast as fireflies in a jar. So if you’re not willing to put in the time, don’t bother. If you can’t keep your eye on the target for three, five, ten years, then you’re just clogging up the system. You have to accept missing out on dozens of other adventures, any number of birthdays, weddings, Christmases, and decide whether those are sacrifices you’re willing to make.

The paradigm shift came down to this: continue working and living and doing the way things have been doing, then go home with some nice stories, and say, “I tried.”

Or change. Take it more seriously. Be totally and completely committed. Then visit what you used to call home, and say, “I did it.”

Categories: hustle, turning points
by Chris
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There are bad days. Two steps forward, one step back days.

Then there are the worst days. One step for man, one mothertrucking leap to square one at escape-velocity speed, a leap straight out of the influence of All Things Good and an ejection towards Never Never land.

On the bad days, you’re in over your head.

On the worst days, you’re an imposter, a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Sweat trickles into tear ducts beneath the mask, keenly aware that everyone in the elevator sees through the shined up kicks and pressed white shirt as the numbers climb tick tick tick to the beat of the Musak, towards your destiny of cracked leather chairs and arthritis inspiring keyboard, despite its ergonomic intentions.

The question, “What made you think you were special?” Sonic Booms! in ear drums on the worst days. Thousands flock to Los Angeles, the Hajj of the entertainment industry, and they’ll devote years of their lives to the crusade, giving up friends and family and dates and poker nights and beaches and sunsets to make it. You think you’ll climb even a mole hill while you’re here? Yes, talent rises, but if you don’t realize there are at least hundreds of people more talented than you, if you think you gots the biggest talent in all the land, then you’re spending time with the wrong people. Even artists with talent oozing from their pores may never make it to the top, as there’s only so much square footage to go around. You want your piece, you have to take it: throwing bows and Tony Jaa knees strikes in every direction. Forget claws; get an Adamantine skeletal frame and hide so tough, it’ll make Captain America’s, federally endorsed, Nazi-crushing shield look like a single-ply toilet paper. And if you hear “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” one more time, you might donkey punch that person right in their sardonic mug.

Trying to make it Los Angeles changes how you view the world. You see it through a rotating kaleidoscope, where values and morals and truth and lies shift with the slightest breeze. It changes you; changes you precisely in the manner you scoffed at before, back when you thought nothing would change you, that you’d stay true no matter what.  The worst days whittle down that resolve like a sharp knife and rough hands groping a block of putty. Straight-shooters might make it in this business, but they certainly don’t make it easy on themselves, and who’d notice if you cheated an inch here, took an iota advantage there?

The loneliness aches like a dull pang on the worst days. Countless meals-for-one while you create your own hustle 3,000 miles away from anyone familiar, the people you want in your life as they love and cry and marry and hold concerts and make art and make mistakes and do what made you love them to begin with. Meanwhile, you try forging new relationships in a climate where throwaway friends are as common as Astroturf roll-out lawns, and just as fake. Everyone’s playing the game, and at some point you realize there’s no way to turn it off, no reset button to push.

But even if the day stretches itself out like Gumby downing muscle relaxers on a hot day, the day ends; even the worst days end. And when it does, you’re still living in Los Angeles, driving down Sunset Blvd to go home or go drink or go commiserate, and this is something no one can take away. No matter the abuse or the belittlement or the loneliness, you’ll have this: you could be anywhere in the world, and here you are, making it on your own initiative and own hustle, getting paid to work your own hours, to create something unique for the world. You’re getting exactly what you signed up for; no more no less. All it took was the willingness to risk everything, which for the great majority of people, amounts to nothing at all.

Categories: hustle, lonliness
by Chris
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