I remember standing on a corner in Edinburgh handing out flyers for my one-woman show, hoping people would take these damp pieces of paper, while I stumbled over my pitch. That they might accept my silly little advertisement and, for whatever reason, actually read it and let themselves be intrigued. Decide that maybe they should give it a try instead of going home to the lovely meal they had planned. That they would think, Yes, the drizzle is annoying, but this young woman looks earnest (and a bit worse for wear), so why not just go to this show?
I’ve been thinking about the world lately (always a dangerous path). The question I ponder is this: When did we stop taking chances on people?
We’re all scared of walking down the slightly less familiar road. I’m not talking about a Frost-ian path with poor visibility and no gardener. I’m talking about the path that isn’t paved and isn’t marked by fancy little signs that are actually mass-produced but meant to look rustic.
It feels like in today’s world, we’re all scared of walking down the slightly less familiar road. I’m not talking about a Frost-ian path with poor visibility and no gardener. I’m talking about the path that isn’t paved and isn’t marked by fancy little signs that are actually mass-produced but meant to look rustic. It seems to me that people these days don’t even want to consider the other road, much less walk down it. And I think that’s killing my spirit a little bit.
I have spent my adult years pursuing a career in film, spurred on by the thought that although it’s a tough industry, if you prove you’re good, sooner or later, someone will take a chance on you. To some degree it’s been true — I’ve had a few jobs where I’ve been presented with an opportunity worth its weight in gold. And I have done my best to leverage them as much as possible, but they were too few and far between to build a reputation off of.
I feel naïve for believing my childish ideas would be true. And so, with a glum type of resignation, I’ve come to accept that people don’t want to take a bet on you. Even though I believe this phenomenon goes beyond film, I’m going to talk about the field I’m familiar with.
One of the most famous cases of being given a shot is Lana Turner, who in the 1930s was discovered sipping soda at a counter. Off of that, she was given a chance to prove herself, and she delivered. Many other people have done this, if in less sensational ways. Think about Robert Evans in the 1970s and all the movies he made, all the chances he took despite the uncertainty involved. And all the other filmmakers who were wild cards played by someone willing to take the risk.
I feel that this used to happen more often than it does now: that a career could be made if someone put you in a position where you could just prove yourself. Today, being given a shot is almost a fairy tale. I know of actresses who had said publicly that they were spotted by a director as they worked a shift at their mind-numbing day job, but who then privately admitted to me they actually got the director’s attention through more conventional ways. Or, if you are given a chance, it’s in a place in your career when you’ve actually already proven yourself. Think about the catch-22 of people wanting to give you a job only if you’ve already done it before so they know they can trust you to do it again.
The fact that being given a break is a fairy tale says everything about the film industry today. We used to understand that sometimes you have to take a gamble, even a calculated one, and see if it pays off. But that trust is gone, that belief that someone might have something to offer even though they haven’t fully proven it yet. In 2024, we want assurances — as if those precluded failure. Plenty of movies have assembled all-star casts and teams only to be a massive flop.
In 2024, we want assurances — as if those precluded failure.
I hope I don’t sound like I’m a bitter reject, whining about how hard life is when maybe, if I were actually talented, I’d have been given chances. Hard to know. Although, based on how many people in my generation feel like this in many different professional worlds, I doubt it.
Sadly, this isn’t a philosophical reflection. This trend has very real consequences. Young people are dying on the vine because the elders are terrified of risks and assume an unknown quantity cannot be trusted as much as a (sometimes lesser) known quantity. Until, of course, that unknown manages to break through and suddenly everyone wants that (“Parasite,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once”). And even some of those “risky” movies came from incredibly established people with incredibly loaded resumes.
So just imagine this: If trustworthy but off-the-beaten-path people are struggling to convince bigwigs to take a chance, how do young people feel? I’ll tell you. Like we are being kept behind a membrane too thick to break through but thin enough that we can see the promise of a future on the other side. Frustrated and unsure about whether we should just give up. Because the sad truth is that if I need to rely on someone taking my flyer and deciding at every juncture in their thought process to take the unexpected, unproven, less-traveled road, to end up at my show, I might be waiting for an audience for a while.
