An Essential Guide to Landing -- and Keeping -- Your first Hollywood Job A position as an assistant to a producer, agent, director, studio executive, or star can be the path to a fabulous career -- or a one-way ticket to hell. How can the aspiring Hollywood assistant quickly learn the inside track to success while avoiding the land mines? It's All Your Fault is the answer. Written by two former Hollywood assistants who've been there and done that, It's All Your Fault is bursting with hard-earned advice, from figuring out who's who and who isn't to sex, drugs, and other work-related issues. Filled with outrageous anecdotes and countless celebrity stories, It's All Your Fault proves an indispensable addition to the nightstand of every wannabe Hollywood mover and shaker.
Are you young, eager, smart, and heading off to LA to make it big in the entertainment business? Time for a reality check: Leave your diploma at home, put your grandiose dreams on hold (where hopefully they'll get tired and hang up), and start by repeating the first rule of the industry: Who you work for is more important than who you are. Then leapfrog over everyone else by reading The Hollywood Assistants Handbook. Written by two very sharp and successful assistants to HPPs (Hollywood Power Players), here are 86 lessons packed with a combination of blunt truth, insider humor, and juicy secrets that explain the unwritten rules of how to get a foot in the door and make all the right moves as you climb to the top. Here are the minimum-wage jobs that will put you in the path of HPPs. An annotated resume roundup. The clubs to frequent and the cocktails to order. Movies to watch and books to read (it's called homework). Dressing do's and don'ts. How to get on the Free List. A lineup of boss genres—the Horror Show, the Romantic Comedy, Mr. Action—and how to dodge the tirades that will soon be hurled your way, along with the proper outlets for venting. Plus, the ins and outs of your most important tool, the telephone—when to listen in (always!), who to put through and who to put off, and your new best friend forever, the Plantronics CS70 cordless headset. With its hilariously snarky tone—the gate-keeping quiz is "How to Tell if You're a Moron Who Should Pack Up the Corolla and Move Back Home"—The Hollywood Assistants Handbook is as baldly entertaining for everyone who loves reading about Hollywood as it is indispensably practical for the job-seeker.
"A Star is Bored is an absolute knockout. Riotously funny and wickedly tender." — Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones and the Six "Wildly funny and irreverent... Lane’s writing lifts the novel far above its gossamer Hollywood setting, suffusing [the novel] with a complex sensitivity." - The New York Times Book Review A hilariously heartfelt novel influenced in part by the author’s time assisting Carrie Fisher. People Magazine Best Book of Summer 2020 - Named a Must-Read Summer book by Town & Country - Named One of the 14 Best Books of Summer 2020 by Harper's Bazaar - One of Library Journal's 2020 "Titles to Watch" - One of the 30 Best Beach Reads According to Parade Magazine She needs an assistant. He needs a hero. Charlie Besson is tense and sweating as he prepares for a wild job interview. His car is idling, like his life, outside the Hollywood mansion of Kathi Kannon, star of stage and screen and People magazine’s Worst Dressed list. She's an actress in need of assistance, and he's adrift and in need of a lifeline. Kathi is an icon, bestselling author, and award-winning movie star, most known for her role as Priestess Talara in a blockbuster sci-fi film. She’s also known in another role: Outrageous Hollywood royalty. Admittedly so. Famously so. Chaotically so, as Charlie quickly discovers. Charlie gets the job, and his three-year odyssey is filled with late-night shopping sprees, last-minute trips to see the aurora borealis, and an initiation to that most sacred of Hollywood tribes: the personal assistant. But Kathi becomes much more than a boss, and as their friendship grows Charlie must make a choice. Will he always be on the sidelines of life, assisting the great forces that be, or can he step into his own life's leading role? Laugh-out-loud funny, and searingly poignant, Byron Lane's A Star is Bored is a novel that, like the star at its center, is enchanting and joyous, heartbreaking and hopeful.
Excel as an Assistant Cameraman (AC) in today’s evolving film industry with this updated classic. Learn what to do—and what NOT to do—during production and get the job done right the first time. The Camera Assistant’s Manual, Sixth Edition covers the basics of cinematography and provides you with the multi-skill set needed to maintain and transport a camera, troubleshoot common problems on location, prepare for job interviews, and work with the latest film and video technologies. Illustrations, checklists, and tables accompany each chapter and highlight the daily workflow of an AC. This new edition has been updated to include: A fresh chapter on the entry level camera positions of Camera Trainee/Production Assistant Coverage of emerging iPhone apps that are used by filmmakers and ACs on set An updated companion website offering online tutorials, clips, and techniques that ACs can easily access while on location (www.cameraassistantmanual.com) All new sample reports and forms including AC time cards, resumé templates, a digital camera report, and a non-prep disclaimer Instruction and custom forms to help freelance filmmakers keep track of daily expenses for tax purposes The Camera Assistant’s Manual, Sixth Edition is an AC's bible for success and a must-have for anyone looking to prosper in this highly technical and ever-changing profession.
The Kindle Bestselling book featured on TV's "ACCESS HOLLYWOOD" DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS... Every movie and TV star has one. So does every agent and manager. Some producers and studio execs have two or even three. I'm talking about an assistant. Someone to answer your phones, pick up your dry cleaning. Someone to hide your drugs. Your assistant knows what you eat, who you're sleeping with and what medications you're taking. They listen in on your phone calls. They are the eyes and ears of Hollywood... and occasionally they talk. Culled from dozens of interviews with former and current Hollywood assistants, Where's My F*cking Latte is a no-holds barred insider's look at what really goes on behind Tinseltown's closed doors. PRAISE FOR "WHERE'S MY F*CKING LATTE?" "I can tell you firsthand that what goes on behind-the-scenes of Hollywood's glittering facade is usually shocking, insane and full of sex offers. Where's My F*cking Latte perfectly captures the abusive and often hysterically unbelievable world of celebs and Tinseltown power-brokers and the culture of excess and entitlement they live in. Two thumbs WAY, WAY UP!" - Daniella Cracknell, Publicist to many of TV's iconic stars from Dick Clark, Howie Mandel, Geraldo Rivera, Mario Lopez to name a few... ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff is a bestselling and award-winning author living in Los Angeles who has been known to occasionally moonlight as a TV host, voice-over artist and rock journalist. A professional composer of music for television for many years, opportunity knocked and transformed him into a screen/TV writer and author featured on "Access Hollywood." Then a podcast recorded in his car became a weeknightly drive-time radio show on Sirius Sateillite Radio. This led to a handsome feature in Playboy Magazine that compared Mark to Howard Stern and Jon Stewart.
Los Angeles Times bestseller A fast-paced, breezy read about life at the bottom of the Hollywood food chain, for fans of The Devil Wears Prada and The Nanny Diaries No political science degree could ever prepare Elizabeth Miller for her new job as a second assistant at The Agency, whose clients include everyone you’ve never met—but you know who they’re sleeping with. A former congressional intern in Washington, Lizzie made a bid for a life change that landed her a job a world away, where ethics and First Amendment debates take a backseat to pleading the Fifth for Ritalin-snorting boss Scott Wagner. He’s the hottest young agent in Hollywood, who devotes his days to playing online poker—that is, when he’s not closing a $30 million deal for one of his AAA-list clients. And while getting six-hundred-dollar highlights from Cameron’s colorist or organizing the strippers for George’s birthday party come close to causing heart failure for this East Coast girl, the real dangers lurk elsewhere. But Lizzie is a survivor, and no Machiavellian assistant, lecherous producer, or power struggle at The Agency can douse her nascent dreams of climbing up the Hollywood ladder. But first she has to run down to the Coffee Bean to pick up that triple espresso, or Scott is going to throw something....
First published in 2010. Being a successful editor is about more than just knowing how to operate a certain piece of software, or when to make a certain transition. On the contrary, there are many unwritten laws and a sense of propriety that are never discussed or taught in film schools or in other books. Based on their own experiences, first as upcoming assistant editors, then as successful Hollywood editors, the authors guide you through the ins and outs of establishing yourself as a respected film and video editor. Insight is included on an array of technical issues such as script breakdown, prepping for sound effects, organizing camera and sound reports, comparison timings, assemply footages and more. In addition, they also provide first-hand insight into industry protocol, providing tips on interviewing, etiquette, career planning and more, information you simply won't find in any other book. The book concludes with a chapter featuring Q+A sessions with various established Hollywood editors about what they expect from their assistant editors.
A history of the Hollywood film industry as a modern system of labor, this book reveals an important untold story of an influential twentieth-century workplace. Ronny Regev argues that the Hollywood studio system institutionalized creative labor by systemizing and standardizing the work of actors, directors, writers, and cinematographers, meshing artistic sensibilities with the efficiency-minded rationale of industrial capitalism. The employees of the studios emerged as a new class: they were wage laborers with enormous salaries, artists subjected to budgets and supervision, stars bound by contracts. As such, these workers--people like Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, and Anita Loos--were the outliers in the American workforce, an extraordinary working class. Through extensive use of oral histories, personal correspondence, studio archives, and the papers of leading Hollywood luminaries as well as their less-known contemporaries, Regev demonstrates that, as part of their contribution to popular culture, Hollywood studios such as Paramount, Warner Bros., and MGM cultivated a new form of labor, one that made work seem like fantasy.
***An Instant New York Times Bestseller*** One of Vulture's Best Comedy Books of 2022 | One of Business Insider's Best Books About Celebrities | One of NPR's Books We Love in 2022 | One of Hudson's Best Books of 2022 | One of Audible's Best of Audiobooks of 2022 From Conan O’Brien’s longtime assistant and cohost of his podcast, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, a completely hilarious and irreverent how-to guide for becoming a terrible, yet unfireable employee, spilling her trade secrets for minimizing effort while maximizing the rewards. Sona Movsesian didn’t wake up one day and decide to become the World’s Worst Assistant. Achieving such greatness is a gradual process--one that starts with long hours and hard work before it eventually descends into sneaking low-dosage edibles into your lunch and napping on your boss’s couch. With a foreword from Conan O’Brien, The World’s Worst Assistant is populated with hysterical black-and-white illustrations, comics, and more. It’s a mixture of how-tos (like How to Nap at Work and How to Watch TV at Your Desk), tips for becoming untouchable (like memorizing social security and credit card numbers and endearing yourself to friends and family), and incredible personal stories from Sona’s twelve years spent working for Conan that put their adorable closeness and professional dysfunction on display. In these pages, Sona will explain her descent from eager, hard-working, ambitious, detail-orientated assistant to self-awarded title-holder for the worst in history. This book is irresistible fun you’ll want to give to every young professional in your life. For readers of heartfelt humor like that of Phoebe Robinson and Colin Jost, The World’s Worst Assistant is a chance for fans, viewers, and listeners of Conan’s shows and podcast to fall in love with Sona and Conan all over again.
Hollywood Drive: What it Takes to Break in, Hang in & Make it in the Entertainment Industry is the essential guide to starting and succeeding at a career in film and TV. Written by a Hollywood insider, Honthaners invaluable experience and advice will give those attempting to enter and become successful in the entertainment industry the edge they need to stand out among the intense competition. Because while film school prepares students to write a script, direct a scene and operate a camera, few newcomers enter the job market understanding how this business truly works and how to land a first jobmuch less succeed in the industry. Hollywood Drive is not merely a book about what it takes to get your foot in the door. It goes beyond that by offering you the tools, attitude, philosophy and road map youll need to give yourself a good fighting chance at success -- whether youre looking for your very first job or for a strategy to move your career to the next level. This book will allow you to proceed with your eyes wide open, knowing exactly what to expect. Hollywood Drive explores the realities of the industry: various career options, effective job search strategies, how to write an effective cover letter and resume, what to expect on your first job, the significance of networking and building solid industry relationships, how a project is sold, and how a reel production office and set operate. Youll learn how to define your goals and make a plan to achieve them, how to survive the tough times, how to deal with big egos and bad tempers, and how to put your passion to work for you. * Hollywood insider with 20+ years of experience provides realistic advice and tips on getting a first job and moving up in a tough industry * Covers a variety of career choices and the basics of how a production is set up and run * Includes must-have information on breaking into both Hollywood and smaller markets nationwide
