This isn’t specifically sartorial, but it is important. Our pal Dave Holmes is a prince of a guy who just got some lousy news (his sitcom didn’t get picked up), but this is the best advice anybody can give anybody. I wouldn’t be doing this blog and series if I didn’t believe in it. Dave would never have wanted to be a VJ, or gotten his twelvedymillion other TV show hosting jobs, or had his own show at the IO or gotten this big-time sitcom pilot acting gig without it. BE AGGRESSIVE. MAKE IT HAPPEN. AD ASTRA!
A. G. G.
R. E. S. S. I. V. E.
A good friend of mine was feeling career-blocked last week, and he asked me for advice. I dusted off a pitch I’ve given a few times before:
Pretend you’re giving it all up and going back to school in a year. Act like you have one year to make it work before you give up and try something else. What haven’t you done? Where aren’t you being aggressive enough? Go do it and embarrass yourself with your pushiness- after all, you’ll be doing something else in a year anyway, so who cares what people think? Push until you feel uncomfortable, and then double it.
The trick is: when you do that, good things start happening right away, and you get yourself to a point where you can’t imagine giving up, one year from now or ever.
The moment I hit “send,” I realized I hadn’t taken my own advice in years. I haven’t taken risks, because I’m content. I haven’t pushed myself as a performer, because I’m making enough to live on. I’d been spending less and less time onstage because (I swear to God this is true, and if you live in Los Angeles, you understand) parking is a hassle. Seriously. And it’s fine, but fine’s not good enough.
I won’t lie to you, I put the majority of my eggs in this sitcom pilot basket. And, instead of our show, NBC decided to go with “Friends, But A Little Bit Older,” “Law & Order: Tokyo Drift” and “Friends, But The Couch Is, Like, It’s Not Hitting You Over The Head With Shabby Chic.” And we certainly wish them the best of luck.
But for a second there, when I got the news that we weren’t picked up, I honestly thought: “What am I going to DO?” There was a feeling, for just a moment, that my career was over. Because I job I didn’t even know about six months ago didn’t pan out.
That’s just dumb. I have not yet begun to fight.
What I’m saying is that I’m about to put my own plan into action. Join me if you feel like. Let’s get just really stupid aggressive, you want to?