Hollywood Ambition

Hollywood is a rotten, dirty little city full of transvestite prostitutes and derelict crackheads, all-around drunkards and addicts as well as a few high-profile clubs and various see-and-be-seen hotspots. Hollywood is also a city of dreams, a metonym to the industry that has come to define entertainment everywhere west of India. And like all dreams, few people who aspire to them ever actually achieve them.

No, Hollywood in actuality should be known worldwide as a place where people go to fail. If you took the droves of ambitious young men who move here to be the next Brad Pitt or Francis Ford Coppola or Quentin Tarantino and subtracted from the multitudes the select few who actually make a legitimate living in their chosen profession of expression, you would be able to fill various small African countries or at least the whole state of Texas with talented, good-looking failures.

Yet every year thousands of starstruck young hopefuls get off the bus on Hollywood and Vine (or, more likely, get off the plane at LAX like that Miley Cyrus song) with a belief that “Yes, gosh darn it, I’m gonna make it!”

But what is “making it”? The average hourly wage for a member of SAG, arguably the hardest union to join in the country, is less than $20. And that’s without a guarantee for work, no base annual salary, nothing. Still, they can say they’re actors – is that making it?

Directors and writers fare a little better, the average DGA-member coming closer to $70,000 a year. But in a city where a home costs nearly 10 times that, good luck enjoying life. More than likely you’ll be sharing a condo in “the valley”, an impression in the ground dressed up as a city hewn out of a barren desert, like living inside a hollow, concrete patch of chaparral.  

So what’s the goal? Achieve the unattainable? And if you’re the one in a million who actually becomes a money-making creative-commerce king, you have one more hurdle – do you sell out, create hideous commercial fodder for millions of dollars or push towards the insightful, “poignant” indie flick that wins you credibility in their community and maybe, just maybe, wins you an Oscar? Because not only does that determine what kind of man the world perceives you as (think Jason Statham vs. Johnny Depp vs. Brad Pitt vs. Nicholas Cage) but it also determines how long of a career you’ll have in the most fickle of industries.

So we’ll be following upcoming movies that men strive to be a part of. And right now, being Oscar season, we’ll be specializing in the indies, the eccentrics, and other movies that you might not be looking to see. We’lll go over what to watch, what’s looking promising, and who you should keep an eye out for.  And occasionally drop some knowledge on some everyday working Hollywoodites you’ve probably never heard of but who, for all intents and purposes, have made it.

Res Ipsa Loquitor,

Ryan