Author Archives: The Anonymous Production Assistant

Resume Basics

Posted on November 29, 2012 | 3 Comments

Received a few resumes from some youngsters. (When did I get so old? Oh God, am I The Old PA?! Nooooooo!) They were rife with rookie mistakes. I’ve said all these things on the blog before, but for those of you who might be too busy (i.e. lazy) to go back through the annals, here’s a summary of my email to them:

  1. Delete your objectives. Nobody cares that you hope to someday achieve a meaningful career in entertainment.
  2. Make it fit on one page.
  3. Your resume’s file name should be FirstLast Resume (e.g. TAPA Resume.pdf).
  4. Your resume should be a balance of text and blank space. Too much text, and you look boring. Too much blank space, and you look dumb.
  5. Single-space between things that are similar and double-space between things that are not. (If you can’t figure out which of the two is appropriate… 1 1/2 space.)
  6. You don’t need to tell me everything you’ve ever done at each job you’ve ever had. Only the things that pertain to THIS job.
  7. Include something that’s unique – something that’s going to elicit a question in an interview. (For me, I list that I’m an Eagle Scout. It comes up as a question in nearly every interview I’ve been on.)
  8. Make it a .doc or .pdf. Anything else and the person who’s hiring you won’t be able to open it.

Good luck.

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Posted in Finding a Job

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Not ‘Till You Book It

Posted on October 15, 2012 | 6 Comments

When I was first starting out, I told my parents about every interview I went on, every potential job offer that came my way, every good parking space I found on lunch runs.

Oh, how years in Hollywood have jaded me.

Now, my parents know almost nothing about my professional life. Why? Because a PA’s life is filled with almosts. I almost got a job as an assistant to an A-list director. I almost sold a feature to Paramount (i.e. I was pitched to Paramount). I  almost met Kevin Bacon (i.e. I interviewed to work on his show).

Other PA’s understand that not every road leads to the promised land, but my parents don’t get that. While catching up with a friend from the Overpriced Film School, I might let him know that I just interviewed to be that A-list director’s new assistant. A month later, when I run into that friend again and I don’t bring it up, he’ll know I didn’t get the job. He won’t feel compelled to ask about it.

But come Thanksgiving, my mom and dad and grandmother are sure as hell going to be asking about the job. And by then, they’ll have told all of my aunts and uncles and cousins, too. Then I’ll have to go to each member of my family, one at a time, and answer the same inane questions. “No, I didn’t get the job… Yes, it would’ve been cool… No, I won’t be going to next year’s Oscars.”

Don’t tell ‘em ’till you book it.

Now, I keep my parents 100% in the dark. If I ever get paid to write something, I’m not even going to tell them until it shoots. I’ll invite my family to set, but I won’t tell them why. Not until they get there and the director calls, “Action,” will I put a script in their hands and silently point to the “written by” line.

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Posted in On the Job

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Fred Savage and CBS Can Go to Hell

Posted on October 11, 2012 | 10 Comments

I know what you guys are thinking. You read the story on Deadline about CBS buying the rights to a blog about life as a Hollywood assistant, with plans to turn it into a pilot. By now, you know that Fred Savage – of Vice Versa fame – is attached to EP and direct. So you’re probably wondering:

“Oh no! Does this mean that TAPA’s hilarious (yet admittedly infrequent) rants will be put on hold as she goes off to produce a hit TV show?!”

No. Because CBS didn’t buy this blog. They bought some Tumblr from an agency assistant, Lauren Bachelis. (In the interest of full disclosure, Lauren and I are friends-in-law, via Facebook.)

Great Idea for a Blog, Lauren!

This may have ruined my morning.

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Posted in About Me, Off-Topic

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One Big Happy Family

Posted on August 6, 2012 | 3 Comments

When you work in a production office, you spend long hours with the same people for months. You get to know each other. You learn their favorite and least favorite foods. You  talk about dating and relationships and your families and your sports teams. And when it ends, you get that feeling you got when you graduated from high school. Maybe a few months later, you even miss those people. Like they say, you become a family.

Isn’t this how every production office feels?

But now I’m starting to think maybe it’s more like Stockholm Syndrome.

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Posted in On the Job

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The N-Word

Posted on July 30, 2012 | 4 Comments

Maybe it goes without saying, but considering that one of the PAs on my show said it to me last week, I’m going to go ahead and say it explicitly. It is never, ever, EVER okay to say the N-word at work. Never ever.

I’m talking, of course, about “networking.” (This goes hand in hand with its cousin, the c-word… “Connections.”)

During my freshman year at the OFS, “The Freshman Film Club” had their first meeting in the lobby of one of the dorms. One kid spoke up, “My uncle is an agent at Endeavor, and he told me the most important thing is networking. I LOVE networking. I’d like to network right now. I brought a pad of paper, and if everyone could write their name and phone number and email address, then we could network in the future.”

He literally sounded like a spam email. And I hope to God that he’s since washed up and moved back home where he’s the AV tech at his church. (But more likely, he is now an agent at WME.)

Keyser Soze

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that networking didn’t exist.

“Networking” shouldn’t be called “networking.” It should be called “having friends.” Because friends get you work. Friends read your screenplay. Friends talk about you to their friends. “Networks” don’t do that.

And by “friends,” I don’t mean Facebook friends. I have hundreds of Facebook friends. I would go to bat for only, maybe, twelve of them.

Before you tell me about your thesis film from college and how you hope to direct someday or the Modern Family spec you wrote last summer, first get to know me. Treat me like a date. Butter me up. Take me out to dinner. Help me move. Drive me to the airport. If you do that, then maybe after a few dates, you might get lucky. But don’t shake my hand and then expect me to hop into bed with you. That makes you a network-rapist.

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Posted in On the Job

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Always Bring Candles

Posted on June 28, 2012 | 1 Comment

Production offices celebrate more birthday parties than Chuck E. Cheese. And they’re usually spontaneous. Someone notices on Facebook that the creepy girl from accounting is celebrating a birthday. Quick! Send a P.A. to CVS to buy a funny, unoffensive card. Quick! Send another P.A. to get a cake (cost of cake correlates to position in the office). Quick! Get everyone to sign the card, even though we barely know this girl and therefore can’t say anything personal on the card.

Sometime in the afternoon, everyone’s standing in the kitchen, when suddenly, there’s a panic. WE DON’T HAVE CANDLES! SHUT THIS MOVIE DOWN, WE DON’T HAVE CANDLES!

Here’s your chance to be a hero. You reach into your desk and pull out candles and a lighter.

Against the odds, this tremendous waste of time and money can continue… all thanks to your candles.

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Posted in On the Job

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For Those of You With Aspirations

Posted on June 27, 2012 | Leave a comment

For those of you who dream of getting paid to write (or direct or production design or shoot or whatever else), I highly recommend reading Kelly Oxford’s recent Tumblr post.

A little background info: Kelly Oxford is a super-smart writer whose Twitter feed has earned her over a hundred thousand followers. Big whoop, right? Wrong. She’s also sold a screenplay, two pilots, and a book. She is the real deal. Last year, TIME named her one of the 140 best Twitter feeds to follow.

Recently, the LOS ANGELES TIMES profiled her. The headline read:

She took offense to the idea of “taking a short cut,” so she wrote a damn good piece about the toils of a writer, specifically an unpaid, undiscovered writer. One of my favorite parts:

If you’re thinking “That’s a lot of work for something that might not pay off.”
THEN THIS IS NOT YOUR BAG SORRY.
You do that [writing], and you do it with NO HOPES OF EVER MAKING A LIVING AT IT.
You do that because you love it and coming home to it is what gets you through your long shifts at the restaurant, it gets you through folding $200 jeans for the entire day, it makes you not want to kill yourself while you photocopy and sign paperwork for your paycheck.
If you aren’t already doing it because you love it, you probably aren’t a writer.

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Posted in Writing

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No Crying in Baseball

Posted on June 25, 2012 | 6 Comments

You’ve got problems. Your girlfriend dumped you. Your little sister ran away from home. Your parents got a divorce. A family member died. You sliced your finger open. The kitchen ran out of your favorite kind of yogurt.

But you know what? Keep that to yourself, nobody cares. (Or whine about it on your stupid ass blog.)

Do not – UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES – cry in the production office.

There are jobs where crying is appropriate:

  1. Doctor
  2. Soldier
  3. Actor

For the rest of us, you keep it under control or sneak away to the bathroom or quit your job, because if a teardrop falls onto your Dozar desk, then you’ve besmirched the industry that employs you.

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Posted in On the Job

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Send Button Anxiety

Posted on June 15, 2012 | 4 Comments

“Hey, TAPA, can you send out tomorrow’s call sheet? The email is already saved in the ‘Drafts’ folder.”

That’s how it starts. Pretty soon, you’re drafting the email yourself. After that, the 2nd AD is emailing them to you directly instead of to the secretary (or APOC, in some cases). After you’ve drafted the email and attached the PDF, your cursor hovers over the send button. You glance up and down the email, making sure it’s right. That moment… right there… that’s what I call…

SEND BUTTON ANXIETY

The models in stock photos are too beautiful to work in production offices.

It’s normal. It’s healthy. It shows that you’re a perfectionist… even when the results aren’t always perfect.

But by God, don’t be a complete wreck about it! A woman in my office right now has all-consuming, full-blown Send Button OCD. (I don’t use the term OCD lightly.) When she has to send an email with more than two recipients, her face goes pale. Sweat gathers on her hands and forehead. She paces the room to avoid vomiting. She asks me to proofread her email over and over again. WTF?!

The repercussions for her doing it wrong are near zero. In a worst case scenario, she lists inaccurate information (which no one will read, because nobody reads emails) or she forgets to attach a document (which she can correct by sending out a “REVISED” email a minute later).

If you can’t write a simple email without losing your mind, then maybe working in a fast-paced production office isn’t for you. Get it together already. Go work in a library or museum.

Or better yet, go see a therapist.

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Posted in On the Job

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It’s Always About the Food

Posted on June 13, 2012 | 7 Comments

On my new show, I’m responsible for crafty in the morning, lunch midday, and coffee in the afternoon. If it’s a late night, I’ve got to cover dinner, as well. It sounds menial and tedious, largely because it is.

But that doesn’t make it unimportant.

This is the kind of treatment they THINK they deserve.

As one coordinator told me (many times), “It’s always about the food.” She took tremendous effort to order the best food and arrange the best spreads for every production meeting or location scout, because that’s what people remember. Well, they won’t remember the good food, but they DEFINITELY remember the bad.

So even though the higher-ups can be infantile (“Make sure the restaurant knows that I’m allergic to onions.” “Wait, are you really allergic to onions?” “No, but I hate them.”), you’ve got to cater to their trivial requests. You’ve got to schlup across town with six bags of food when everyone decides to squeeze every penny out of the $10 or $12 (or the very rare $20) daily limit. You’ve got to circle the block seven times to look for street parking.

And you’ve got to make two trips when the restaurant accidentally includes onions (…because heaven forbid she take them out herself).

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Posted in On the Job

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