Writer Business Lessons From... Hollywood aka Becoming an Overnight Success
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Ever get the feeling the universe is trying to tell you something?
Like you’re watching and reading and listening to different things, but getting the same message each time?
Just in case you’re not getting the same message that I am right now, I thought I’d share the lesson from Hollywood that the universe has been shouting at me.
I recently finally got round to watching Michael J Fox’s documentary, Still (on Apple), because we got a new TV and the new TV recommended it to me. It’s like it knew I meant to watch it when we first got Apple TV, but didn’t get round to it.
I wanted to watch it because Michael J Fox is amazing, but I was scared because my father-in-law has Parkinson’s and seeing the similarities and reality makes me want to cry. Parkinson’s Disease is horrific and one of those things that destroys without hope. So this documentary was going to be heartbreaking.
I sort of forgot that it could also be inspiring. Because, as I said, Michael J Fox is amazing. Not because of his mindset when it comes to such a debilitating disease, but because of his talent and career, even well before his diagnosis and during the time he was keeping the disease a secret.
There are ZERO spoilers ahead.
He talks in the documentary about the beginning of his career. How he was broke, getting acting jobs but not making enough, selling his furniture, wishing he had $2 to buy lunch.
Then he got a role on the TV show Family Ties by being himself – quick and funny – at the audition.
Spielberg (of the Steven variety) saw him become the star of Family Ties purely on his own talent and wanted him for his new film.
Family Ties wouldn’t let him go, but they agreed he could do both. So he filmed the show during the day and Back To The Future in the evenings, so exhausted he didn’t know who he was or where.
Suddenly, after years of desperately working his arse off, he was an overnight success.
Which is often the case with overnight successes.
Listening to Nathan Fillion’s (another Canadian!) acting journey on his new podcast with fellow actor Alan Tudyk (I really recommend it, it’s called Once We Were Spacemen), I noticed something of a pattern.
After working hard on a soap in Canada, Nathan moved to LA to make it big and got a role on Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (which is one hell of a pattern, isn’t it).
And he spent the next year unemployed, desperate and selling off his furniture.
There must be so many actors who have followed a similar pattern as Michael J Fox and Nathan Fillion.
But they’re actors and we can’t all rely on a Spielberg to help us out.
How does this apply to writers?
Well, bear with me, because my next example is about writing, but it’s also about an actor.
Alan Tudyk was in a dry spell. The jobs weren’t coming, so he turned to writing to fill the time. He had an idea and now he had the time to focus on it.
That old trick of creating your own work.
But no one would make Con Man.
Alan believed in it, so he kept at it. Despite rejection after rejection.
He even turned down acting jobs because the production companies refused to make even a pilot of Con Man alongside the main project they were offering him.
Eventually, Alan took Con Man to a crowd funding platform (which I helped fund in a small way and I still have the DVD! If you weren’t an original funder, Con Man is currently available to watch on Prime) and…
Was a huge success!
He created a cult favourite with fans who are STILL asking for more over a decade later.
Alan believed and so he kept pushing, just as Michael J Fox and Nathan Fillion did.
Check out any successful artist and you’ll see they have this in common.
They all persisted.
Persistence with a capital P.
You might not be the next Michael J Fox, Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk (who is basically in every Disney film these days) with such career success, but how will you know if you don’t keep trying and keep trying and don’t you dare stop, because what if the next one is the big one!
Don’t stop believing in yourself.
Believe in your art, in your stories.
Above all, persist.