It's not too often I get to use the blog for a bit o' breaking news but here's a bulletin hot off the presses:
I got a job!....of sorts.
It's actually just a ten week paid internship, but the 'what' isn't as important as the 'where.'
Most notably, this paid internship is at Creative Artists Agency. Otherwise known as "CAA."
Otherwise known as "the preeminent A-List talent agency in Hollywood, if not the world."
Holy shit!
Those careful readers (Tom and Nick?) will know I've mentioned CAA a few times, most notably when I had a class in the top-tier, top-shelf agency last fall.
How it all came about is as simple as it is boring to write about. There was a posting on USC's job board. Looked like a pretty awesome - if not long shot - opportunity. I applied. A month later I had a phone interview. A week later I had an in-person interview. Now next week I start what is sure to be some of the busiest, most interesting, most educational, most intense, and most stylish* few months of my tenure in California.
*As a scruffy film student I've been on a steady wardrobe diet of flannels, t-shirts, and Cubs paraphernalia. This is the first time I'll be wearing a tie consistently since leaving the hallowed halls of Benet Academy.
Luckily, what was true then remains true today.....I look damn good in a tie.
So, yeah, pretty wild right? It's funny.... I kinda feel like the episode of Seinfeld when George lands his job with the Yankees....(which is an apt analogy since CAA happens to represent....the New York Yankees...)
Jerry : The New York Yankees?!
George : The New York Yankees!
Jerry : Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle ... Costanza?
From the first time I found out about CAA was and even after going to classes their for a semester never in a million years did I think I'd be driving to 2000 Avenue of the Stars, Los Angeles, CA every day (at least, not to go to work).
Btw, how about this place? Like, even the address is pretty baller.
I feel like Jerry should be somewhere saying "Spielberg, Clooney, Hanks, De Niro .... Kosin?"
Now, I'm expecting my tenure at CAA will end better than Costanza's.... getting traded to Tyler Chicken for an all-chicken Yankee concessions.
Hopefully I'll have more on this to come, but shit who knows if I've got time to keep up on this thing?
We all know how demanding agents can be...
BOOM. Think I'd get an agency gig and not show some love to the most famed agent around. Enjoy the video, and just think......that wonderful screaming asshole could be ME someday!
(not likely)
But speaking of art imitating life....or art imitating Creative Artists....funny that after finding out the news I also came across this audio clip from a musical based off a former CAA assistant's experience. It's a rather catchy and entertaining dig on the famed "high-stress" atmosphere inside.....check it out.
The lyrics are a little inside baseball but you get the jist. Rumors of dreams being crushed and hearts ripped out always swirl at the big agencies.
Is it true? Are the next few months going to be nothing but torture? Will I become horribly bitter and disillusioned? Is my soul going to be crushed?
I doubt it.
But, being a Cubs fan, at least I'm used to it.
- mjk
Friday, September 30, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
USC Moment #3 - The Man. The Myth. The Spielberg.
Okay, so moments 4 and 5 were all well and good, but now it's time to get to the real top-shelf stuff. The "remember it like it was yesterday for the rest of your life" stuff. And that's what these final three moments are, without a doubt.
My #3 (though could easily be #1) favorite USC film school moment is when Steven Spielberg came to campus...to the Steven Spielberg class...to be interviewed and field questions from students.
First, just a blurb about the "Spielberg Class" that I was in. I happened upon it rather fortuitously, having already planned to take a directing class on Wednesday nights. I was hanging out around campus killing time until my directing class started and a friend mentioned she was going to sit in for the first half-hour of Spielberg before heading to our directing class. I tagged along and was wowed by the preeminent Critical Studies professor at USC, Drew Casper.
The first class opened with a Spielberg video montage followed by Prof Casper riding into the theater on a bike dressed in a red hoodie sweatshirt to the E.T. soundtrack.
Needless to say, I dropped my directing class the next day and decided I could probably learn more from watching the complete works of Spielberg than spending three hours each night arguing about the 180 degree line.
CUT TO: Some two months and roughly ten Spielberg movies later and the big night was upon us. Casper explained that Spielberg would come in, he'd interview him for a bit, and then the floor - and the majority of the time - would be open to student questions.
Okay, so I am prone to hyperbole from time to time, but let me just say - the roughly 90 minutes that Spielberg was in the theater, talking and answering questions, was among one of the warmest, happiest, most thrilling, fascinating and inspiring nights of my life. It was like the equivalent of actually BEING in a Spielberg movie (with respects to the Jurassic Park ride at Universal). I've never felt such kindness, warmth, and emotion flow from a speaker to a crowd of 300 people. To hijack a line from Spielberg's first Oscar winning film.....
"The Spielberg visit is an absolute good."
"Why?" the cynical, critical, and curious may ask. Well, just his persona was so comfortable and you knew he was really truly happy to be there. It helped, of course, that as a class we'd been studying the man and the work for weeks and there was equal amounts of joy for us that he was there. But these are vague, I'll share a few specifics:
Firstly, I asked Spielberg the second question of the night. I actually kinda talked to the man. My opening was better than my actual question, though, when I stood up...scruffy beard, Cubs cap on, untucked flannel.....and said "Hello Mr. Spielberg, thank you so much for coming, I'm a big fan of all of your work, though I think my favorite thing you've done is your cameo performance as the Assessor of Cook County in the movie 'The Blues Brothers.'
Big laugh. Spielberg too.
He might have said "thank you" or something but how the fuck do I know, I was kind blacked out while I was talking. Talking to Steven Spielberg, did I mention that? Anyway, I asked a real softball question (2nd of the night, remember) about what it was like coming up with a group of young filmmakers like Coppola and Lucas and he gave a decent answer. It didn't matter. My night was made.
Some other highlights included seeing my friend have the thesis of her paper get proved from the mouth of Spielberg himself when she asked about how 'Amblin' - S.S.'s first short - seemed to diverge from what he usually did in films. He agreed and said that in 'Amblin' he was trying to make a movie that was more popular at that time - about teens, drugs, and sex - rather than something truly near and dear to his heart.
There were other great moments: he dispensed some advice for young directors - "The hardest thing is knowing what you want," he really opened up when asked about Schindler's List and how that film was important to him, and a great moment of hilarity when a very well-spoken fanboy demanded to know why the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the "hero" of Jurassic Park and star of the JP franchise, was allowed to be so easily killed in JP:3. Which Spielberg did not direct, only exec produced.
"As you said," Spielberg replied, "I did not direct it."
Crowd laughed.
"But, you have a really good and true point.....let's just say.....I'll make it up to you when we make the fourth one."
Aaaand the crowd went wild.
There were tons of those little moments that were fun - sometimes because it was blowing our minds that this legendary guy was here, other times were just because he had very interesting, smart things to say and it didn't matter how much his movies grossed - but the conversation was always engaging from both sides.
One other very cool moment is a tip of the cap to Casper who told Spielberg about a play he'd seen in London called "War Horse."
S.S. said he's been meaning to see it.
Casper said "I expect 'War Horse' will be your next big live-action feature." The crowd laughed and cheered - we'd heard this before. Spielberg said he'd have to check it out. This was fall of 2009.
WAR HORSE, directed by Steven Spielberg, opens everywhere this Christmas.
So, all in all, it was a pretty amazing and special night, capped off by S.S. stepping forward to directly address all the students. He reached out to us and gave us an edict from the heart about us being the next generation of filmmakers.
"The future of the industry isn't in my hands - it's in yours."
With that we thanked him with thunderous applause and he graciously bowed and thanked us, and my buddy a few seat down snapped a pic -
It was a perfect ending to a really amazing evening - I'm pretty sure it was somehow scored by John Williams also - and looking back it's a great reminder of how this annoying crappy industry can have these moments reach a level beyond "special" or "magical" and can only be defined as "Spielbergian."
My #3 (though could easily be #1) favorite USC film school moment is when Steven Spielberg came to campus...to the Steven Spielberg class...to be interviewed and field questions from students.
First, just a blurb about the "Spielberg Class" that I was in. I happened upon it rather fortuitously, having already planned to take a directing class on Wednesday nights. I was hanging out around campus killing time until my directing class started and a friend mentioned she was going to sit in for the first half-hour of Spielberg before heading to our directing class. I tagged along and was wowed by the preeminent Critical Studies professor at USC, Drew Casper.
The first class opened with a Spielberg video montage followed by Prof Casper riding into the theater on a bike dressed in a red hoodie sweatshirt to the E.T. soundtrack.
Needless to say, I dropped my directing class the next day and decided I could probably learn more from watching the complete works of Spielberg than spending three hours each night arguing about the 180 degree line.
CUT TO: Some two months and roughly ten Spielberg movies later and the big night was upon us. Casper explained that Spielberg would come in, he'd interview him for a bit, and then the floor - and the majority of the time - would be open to student questions.
Okay, so I am prone to hyperbole from time to time, but let me just say - the roughly 90 minutes that Spielberg was in the theater, talking and answering questions, was among one of the warmest, happiest, most thrilling, fascinating and inspiring nights of my life. It was like the equivalent of actually BEING in a Spielberg movie (with respects to the Jurassic Park ride at Universal). I've never felt such kindness, warmth, and emotion flow from a speaker to a crowd of 300 people. To hijack a line from Spielberg's first Oscar winning film.....
"The Spielberg visit is an absolute good."
"Why?" the cynical, critical, and curious may ask. Well, just his persona was so comfortable and you knew he was really truly happy to be there. It helped, of course, that as a class we'd been studying the man and the work for weeks and there was equal amounts of joy for us that he was there. But these are vague, I'll share a few specifics:
Firstly, I asked Spielberg the second question of the night. I actually kinda talked to the man. My opening was better than my actual question, though, when I stood up...scruffy beard, Cubs cap on, untucked flannel.....and said "Hello Mr. Spielberg, thank you so much for coming, I'm a big fan of all of your work, though I think my favorite thing you've done is your cameo performance as the Assessor of Cook County in the movie 'The Blues Brothers.'
Big laugh. Spielberg too.
He might have said "thank you" or something but how the fuck do I know, I was kind blacked out while I was talking. Talking to Steven Spielberg, did I mention that? Anyway, I asked a real softball question (2nd of the night, remember) about what it was like coming up with a group of young filmmakers like Coppola and Lucas and he gave a decent answer. It didn't matter. My night was made.
Some other highlights included seeing my friend have the thesis of her paper get proved from the mouth of Spielberg himself when she asked about how 'Amblin' - S.S.'s first short - seemed to diverge from what he usually did in films. He agreed and said that in 'Amblin' he was trying to make a movie that was more popular at that time - about teens, drugs, and sex - rather than something truly near and dear to his heart.
There were other great moments: he dispensed some advice for young directors - "The hardest thing is knowing what you want," he really opened up when asked about Schindler's List and how that film was important to him, and a great moment of hilarity when a very well-spoken fanboy demanded to know why the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the "hero" of Jurassic Park and star of the JP franchise, was allowed to be so easily killed in JP:3. Which Spielberg did not direct, only exec produced.
"As you said," Spielberg replied, "I did not direct it."
Crowd laughed.
"But, you have a really good and true point.....let's just say.....I'll make it up to you when we make the fourth one."
Aaaand the crowd went wild.
There were tons of those little moments that were fun - sometimes because it was blowing our minds that this legendary guy was here, other times were just because he had very interesting, smart things to say and it didn't matter how much his movies grossed - but the conversation was always engaging from both sides.
One other very cool moment is a tip of the cap to Casper who told Spielberg about a play he'd seen in London called "War Horse."
S.S. said he's been meaning to see it.
Casper said "I expect 'War Horse' will be your next big live-action feature." The crowd laughed and cheered - we'd heard this before. Spielberg said he'd have to check it out. This was fall of 2009.
WAR HORSE, directed by Steven Spielberg, opens everywhere this Christmas.
So, all in all, it was a pretty amazing and special night, capped off by S.S. stepping forward to directly address all the students. He reached out to us and gave us an edict from the heart about us being the next generation of filmmakers.
"The future of the industry isn't in my hands - it's in yours."
With that we thanked him with thunderous applause and he graciously bowed and thanked us, and my buddy a few seat down snapped a pic -
It was a perfect ending to a really amazing evening - I'm pretty sure it was somehow scored by John Williams also - and looking back it's a great reminder of how this annoying crappy industry can have these moments reach a level beyond "special" or "magical" and can only be defined as "Spielbergian."
Monday, September 5, 2011
Labor of Love
So it's been a little while since I've blogged...blah blah blah....
But, hey, we all know I like to take it easy over the summer.
And most of fall.
And don't think I'll be doing ANYTHING during the holidays.
BUT, I will always sit down and focus up for a good three to four weeks in September and October and boy, are those golden.
So, here we are back in the swing of another semester, except, there IS no semester. School is over.
And yet the blog continues....
For now, at least.
Part of me had wanted to wrap things up on the blog around graduation and let it stand as a cohesive look into my tenure at USC. But that didn't happen for a few reasons...1) I didn't have time to wrap up everything on the blog since I got busy finishing school [speaking of, USC Top Moment #3 coming down the pike any day now] and 2) I got busy doing a few other things this summer, like helping a friend make his thesis and helping my family move out of the burbs. And 3) I don't really think I can shut the book on USC yet even though I'm graduated. I'm still defined more as a former USC student than anything else right now, though in time that will change. I feel like the months after graduation are kinda still part of my education and time as a Trojan.
So....yes: the blog continues. I'll probably spend a good chunk of time looking back at USC just to make sure I get all my 'Final Thoughts' out on my time there.
I'll also do my best to offer up some snapshots of the murky post-USC landscape. Bottom line right now: it is not great (nobody said it would be) but I wouldn't say it's awful either (lots of people say that).
Clearly since I'm not working on a TV show or applying for membership in the WGA right now things aren't as swell as they could be. But I'm testing the waters of my writing and working hard to get work and taking any and every opportunity* with an open mind.
I'll fill y'all in with more specifics as soon as they bceome available....
or as soon as I figure them out.
Talk soon,
MJK
*This includes, but is not limited to: becoming a gigolo, becoming a pimp, dealing drugs, selling my sperm, selling someone else's sperm, telemarketing, the Bloomingdale's executive training program, hitman, grease man, hatchet man, assassin, social assassin, day laborer, organ harvester, professional daredevil, stand-up comedian, ventriloquist, magician, magician's assistant, sorcerer's apprentice, dentist, shoe salesman, copywriter for the Dayton Bugle, hand model, stunt double, bodyguard, drug dealer-keeper-awayer, personal savior, televangelist, Republican nominee for President, pole dancer, ghostbuster, dog-walker, gold-trader, gold-prospector, oil man, entrepreneur, real estate mogul and curator for the Lost City of Atlantis. Lady, if there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe whatever you want. Congrats for reading this far down, the list just became a nice snippet from 'Ghostbusters' that I hope you enjoyed. Okay, this list is ending for real....right......now.
But, hey, we all know I like to take it easy over the summer.
And most of fall.
And don't think I'll be doing ANYTHING during the holidays.
BUT, I will always sit down and focus up for a good three to four weeks in September and October and boy, are those golden.
So, here we are back in the swing of another semester, except, there IS no semester. School is over.
And yet the blog continues....
For now, at least.
Part of me had wanted to wrap things up on the blog around graduation and let it stand as a cohesive look into my tenure at USC. But that didn't happen for a few reasons...1) I didn't have time to wrap up everything on the blog since I got busy finishing school [speaking of, USC Top Moment #3 coming down the pike any day now] and 2) I got busy doing a few other things this summer, like helping a friend make his thesis and helping my family move out of the burbs. And 3) I don't really think I can shut the book on USC yet even though I'm graduated. I'm still defined more as a former USC student than anything else right now, though in time that will change. I feel like the months after graduation are kinda still part of my education and time as a Trojan.
So....yes: the blog continues. I'll probably spend a good chunk of time looking back at USC just to make sure I get all my 'Final Thoughts' out on my time there.
I'll also do my best to offer up some snapshots of the murky post-USC landscape. Bottom line right now: it is not great (nobody said it would be) but I wouldn't say it's awful either (lots of people say that).
Clearly since I'm not working on a TV show or applying for membership in the WGA right now things aren't as swell as they could be. But I'm testing the waters of my writing and working hard to get work and taking any and every opportunity* with an open mind.
I'll fill y'all in with more specifics as soon as they bceome available....
or as soon as I figure them out.
Talk soon,
MJK
*This includes, but is not limited to: becoming a gigolo, becoming a pimp, dealing drugs, selling my sperm, selling someone else's sperm, telemarketing, the Bloomingdale's executive training program, hitman, grease man, hatchet man, assassin, social assassin, day laborer, organ harvester, professional daredevil, stand-up comedian, ventriloquist, magician, magician's assistant, sorcerer's apprentice, dentist, shoe salesman, copywriter for the Dayton Bugle, hand model, stunt double, bodyguard, drug dealer-keeper-awayer, personal savior, televangelist, Republican nominee for President, pole dancer, ghostbuster, dog-walker, gold-trader, gold-prospector, oil man, entrepreneur, real estate mogul and curator for the Lost City of Atlantis. Lady, if there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe whatever you want. Congrats for reading this far down, the list just became a nice snippet from 'Ghostbusters' that I hope you enjoyed. Okay, this list is ending for real....right......now.
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