bloggie blog

Since moving to Los Angeles, I’ve learned many things about The Biz. Some of these learnings keep coming up in conversation, and I’ve noticed a trend. The trend is that people in The Biz don’t realize that the same thing happens outside of the world of acting. So today I post Thing One in my on-going list of things people talk about as if they weren’t true of other businesses or other cities.

Things about The Biz and LA that are not unique, #1
College programs in acting don’t prepare you for working as an actor

There are numerous examples of things that are vital to be an actor in LA that don’t come up in grad school. So people say that MFA programs should ditch classes on Greek tragedies and substitute classes on [insert pet topic here: on-camera audition technique, acting for commercials, what you want in a headshot, etc.] because you have to know these things, but nobody learns them in school and furthermore, Aeschylus is worth jack shite when meeting with agents.

Rarely do I hear mention of the disconnect between the academy and the field in other professions. I got a graduate degree in electrical engineering from Cornell, and soon thereafter found myself interviewing for a job at a place in Utah that made PCMCIA cards for laptop communications. This was a typical job opportunity in many ways for somebody with a masters in EE. How much did I know about the details of the job? Squat. How much did they want me to know? Much more than that. How did they make me feel about it? Like sh¡t. (No worries, eventually I got a job in manufacturing at HP and become miserable there instead at the other company. My greenness didn’t bother HP so much. They understood.)

My point is that it happens all the time in many industries. Casting director Bonnie Gillespie agreed with me the other night. Apparently she got a journalism degree from professors that taught typewriters and had never worked in the profession. See what I mean? Not unique to The Biz.

Stay tuned for Part II, branding.