An Open Letter to Alex Footman and Eric Glatt:
So I guess that whole "suing Fox Searchlight thing" isn't going to work out for you, is it? In the future, be sure to sue the production company that MADE the movie and not the company that acquired the film after it was made. It's kind of like a cow suing McDonald's for turning it into a hamburger. There's a saying, "if you come for the queen, you better be prepared to kill her." I'm not sure who said it. It could have been Oprah. Or Starr Jones. Or Martin Luther King Jr or Abraham Lincoln.
From your claims, you state that you had to make coffee and fetch lunch. If that is all you did during your time, then congratulations: You two are the first intern/ production assistants in the history of cinema to never do any actual office work.
What were you expecting? An "educational experience?" It's a production office, not Harvard. You learn how to copy scripts, sort mail, distribute call sheets, and yes... get coffee and take lunch orders. Why? Because someone has to. And it's entry level. It's getting your foot in the door.
Do you know how many people would give their right arm to intern in a production office on a Natalie Portman movie? Why would they want to do that? Why work for free for 15 hours a day? TO MAKE CONTACTS. To get to know the players. To watch what is going on. To see how a film is made. To listen in on conversations.
AN INTERNSHIP IS WHAT YOU MAKE OF IT.
Interns are given more responsibility once they have proven themselves. If ALL you ever did was grab coffee and lunch, take out the trash and clean the production office then brace yourself when I say this: apparently you're both idiots and can't be trusted with something important like collating scripts.
Interning sucks. It's shit work and no pay. But it's what you make of it. Everyone starts at the bottom. Everyone pays their dues.
I, too made the mistake of interning. It was the summer of 1991. I had just graduated from Norcross High School and would be attending Georgia State University in fall, studying film and criminology. (Frankly, I think everyone working in Hollywood should be forced to study criminology, but that's beside the point.)
I was a stand-in and featured extra (I was basically Jeremy London's mute friend who followed him everywhere) and I made the HUGE mistake of asking, "can I intern in the extras casting office?" Free labor? Sure! Come on in!
My job was to open the hundreds of envelopes from people submitting to be extas and file them into categories by age and race. I still have scars on my fingers from reaching into envelopes and getting my soft, dainty hands ripped open from staples used to attach resumes to headshots. I BLED! My hand modeling career days were over before they even began. I should have sued.
But that was my job. To open envelopes and file. And fetch coffee and lunch for the others working. And take out the trash. And clean. That's all I did for four months.
I'm not sure what I was expecting. I certainly had no intention of being a casting director. I was studying to be a screenwriter and I still wanted to act. "Establish myself as a writer, then get back into acting." I've been saying that for 20 years. But at the time, I just wanted the experience of working in the office and being on set.
And I loved it. I loved being able to interact with writers and actors. I absorbed everything like a sponge.
And as I proved that I was not a total lunatic and had mastered the art of envelope opening and file management, I was asked to make phone calls and give out information about directions and wardrobe. I answered a lot of phone calls. I left a lot of messages.
Had I learned anything? No. I already knew how to make phone calls. I knew how to give people directions.
I mainly worked with the first assistant and had very little communication with a woman named Cynthia Stillwell. She had spiky blond hair and wore a ton of jewelry. She was like Susan Powter meets a Tennessee Williams character. She was always friendly when we passed, but I was afraid of her.
One day, I was presented with a stack of headshots about three inches thick and asked to pull out twenty pictures of people who could be friends with Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn in a television movie called TO DANCE WITH THE WHITE DOG. Thinking nothing of it, I flew threw the pictures and handed Cynthia my picks. I remember there being a shift in the force of the office at that moment. Cynthia smiled and handed them over to the first assistant who shot daggers through me. They were the same twenty pictures Cynthia had already chosen. I was being tested and passed. Much to the dismay of the first assistant. And the second assistant.
While working on the show, I met Carol Green, Ian Sander, Dick Feury, and a ton of guest directors.
After the show was canceled, I was hired by Cynthia to cast my first mini series, THE OLDEST LIVING CONFEDERATE WIDOW TELLS ALL. I turned 21 over the course of shooting. Diane Lane bought me a cake. To this day, it's one of my favorite projects I've ever done. I never forgot that it was because I had worked for free and proven myself. I worked very hard to earn Cynthia's respect. "He's very passionate," she would say in a lilting accent with the subtext of "he takes this all too seriously."
I continued to work with Cynthia on and off throughout college. While my peers were making student films, I was casting and doing occasional stunt work. I attended three days of my screenwriting class the entire quarter, while working on FLUKE (where I doubled as Matthew Modine's ghost - an effect that was cut from the film). I watched all the films from class in my room on the honeywagon and faxed all my tests from the production trailer. I studied documentary film-making (which I HATED) in order to avoid having to make a "student film."
When I graduated with my degree in film, I set my eyes on my dream job: working in features development at Turner Broadcasting. And I got really pissed off that human resources wasn't calling me in! Problem was, there weren't any openings.
So, I picked up the phone and called the switchboard. "I need to speak to someone in development," I said with all the furver I could muster.
"Hold please."
I waited. I took a deep breath and then a woman answered the phone, "Turner Originals, this is Adrienne."
And I just blurted out very quickly: "Adrienne, my name is Chad and I just graduated from Georgia State University and I want to work in development and I want to work for you and I will for free until I can prove that you can't live without me."
There was silence over the line. Then, "Great. When can you start?"
I replied, "I can be there in twenty minutes."
Twenty minutes later, I was standing in the lobby of "the mansion" on Techwood. I was instructed to go through a set of doors, follow to the first hallway, turn left, go to the next entrance and turn left. Follow to the stairs. Go down the stairs, through the break room, and turn around. Open the set of doors and find the door to Turner Originals.
I felt like I was on a spy mission. I have no idea how I found the place and feared I should have left bread crumbs, but eventually found my way to Adrienne Bramhall: a woman in a red dress and the spitting image of Linda Fiorentino from THE LAST SEDUCTION.
After short pleasantries, she introduced me to a cubicle with boxes and boxes of envelopes. They needed to be opened, logged and filed. I asked what kind of work they did. Adrienne responded, "we're the non-fiction series and specials arm for TBS."
Awesome. I slept through all of documentary film and now I was going to be working with the same people I should have been studying six months earlier. AND it wasn't features. But I was "in."
AND AGAIN WITH THE FILING! But I did it. I worked for free for a month, but I had access to the all-important job board at Turner. Every day I sent resumes to the people who were hiring. But it didn't matter, because Turner Original Productions hired me as a submissions coordinator.
The pay sucked and I didn't have insurance. But I was meeting documentary producers and directors and talking to them every day on the phone. I was learning how to structure a pitch and I even got to submit show ideas. I also became the go-to guy for casting advice for the series and specials. No one believed me that this girl named "Jennifer Lopez" was going to be huge. "She's Puerto Rican! It'll never happen!" To this day, I've never told anyone that Thom Beers first choice for host on one of the specials was actually available. I lied and said he wasn't. I got most of the floor on board with Matthew Fox, who was up and coming on a show called PARTY OF FIVE. The special was the highest rated show of the season for TBS.
But the tides were changing and I was the first rat off the Titanic. Cynthia needed me back in casting, and I took on the HBO movie MISS EVERS' BOYS and immediately followed that up with Robert Altman's THE GINGERBREAD MAN. (Turner Originals would fold two months after I left.)
After THE GINGERBREAD MAN wrapped, there was a dark and bleak time in Atlanta. Nothing was shooting. I had to take a job working at the capital with the Public Service Commission as the assistant to the Executive Director. Ready to put a bullet in my head, I decided, screw it. I'm moving to Los Angeles. I booked a week-long trip to find an apartment and start looking for a job.
Upon landing at LAX, my phone had three messages. All three were, "come back to Atlanta. Two movies just signed deals to shoot in Atlanta."
I worked as the casting assistant to a woman I'll call "Joan" on REMEMBER THE TITANS, ROAD TRIP, THE SUBSTITUTE 4, and Sam Raimi's THE GIFT. There's a lot I could say about working with "Joan," but I won't.
BUT - I will tell about a weekend I went to Savannah where THE GIFT was shooting. I had just found out that a young lady with some serious mental health issues (a whole other story) had killed herself. I had to get out of town, so at the end of day on Friday, I drove 3 hours to Savannah to sit in the beach house being rented by my friend, Cindy.
I drove to set to get the keys from Cindy on set and as I pulled into crew parking, my car EXPLODED. Steam. Radiator fluid. Oil. You name it, it was coming out of my car. To add to the scene, every five minutes you could hear Katie Holmes screaming her head off in the distance. (They were filming her death scene.)
As I stood there in stunned silence, the production manager came barreling towards me and hugged me. "Thank God, you're here! Our extras casting director fled!"
To say he "fled" is to say that he did a few really bad things involving children and was nowhere to be found. With him gone, the only person left was his intern. A sweet girl who had NO IDEA what she was doing.
Long story short, I made a deal with the producers: get my car fixed. Don't tell Joan I was here. I'll train the intern to take over extras casting.
See, Joan didn't believe in doing anything for free. Joan was never a team player.
For the next 48 hours, I taught an intern "Everything You Need To Know About Being a Casting Director." After I was safely back in Atlanta, I would secretly call her four times a day and check in with her. The production manager called me four times a day to thank me for what I had done.
Everyone was happy.
Except for Joan. Joan found out about my secret trip and training session. She wasn't happy AT ALL that I had gone behind her back and done this. And I was furious that I was having to HIDE the fact that I was being a team player. So I quit. I quit before she could fire me.
And a month later I moved to LA. Because, come Hell or high water, I was going to be a writer.
Adrienne, who was now living in LA, hired me for my first writing gig. Not much, but it paid rent for a few months.
Because of my good deeds on the set of THE GIFT, I was remembered when it came time to crew up a little movie called SPIDER-MAN. I was hired by Central Casting for what should have been only one film and then I would go back to my career as a writer.
Not only did I get to work with Sam, but I ended up working for Carol Green on SCARY MOVIE 2. This also led to me getting hired on THE MAJESTIC, WHITE OLEANDER, and the LA portion of ROAD TO PERDITION.
Central asked me if I wanted to stay on full time. I agreed, just to get my feet wet and suddenly I was working with everyone I knew in Atlanta. Brian O'Kelly had been my 2nd AD on REMEMBER THE TITANS. He hired me for ALIAS. Carol Green hired me for CROSSING JORDAN. I was hired on JUDGING AMY because I told the production manager, "honey, I'm the most bluntly honest person you're ever going to know."
Ian Sander and Dick Fuery from I'LL FLY AWAY hired me for GHOST WHISPERER. Allan Arkush, who was a director from FLY AWAY was an executive producer on CROSSING JORDAN.
Other shows followed over the next five years. CSI: MIAMI, AMERICAN DREAMS, COLD CASE, EVE... Movies like MUST LOVE DOGS, CATWOMAN, THE BLACK DAHLIA, DOMINO, MISS CONGENIALITY 2.
At the time, you couldn't quit a show if you didn't like it. Central Casting was set up like the Mustang Ranch. If you were wanted, then you were going into the back with whoever wanted you. And I was one of the prettiest girls at the Mustang Ranch.
I visited every single set at least once a week. (ALIAS and CROSSING JORDAN I was on daily.) I got to know every single crew member and what they did. Because I was so vested in the success of the show, producers wanted me. Other producers would hear about me and call and ask for me.
In five years, I cast over 60 television shows, features and movies of the week. I figured up that I cast over 1,800 hours footage.
But I quit. I had enough in 2005 and nearly had a nervous breakdown. I was casting 24/7. The prettiest girl at the Mustang Ranch was worn out.
I was hired by the showrunners of CROSSING JORDAN to finish off the last season of the show. I worked with the writers and dealt with the cast. I was a liaison to everyone. I loved it.
The show was canceled and I got a phone call from our production manager, Skip Beaudine. "I know you don't cast anymore, but I need some free help. I'm helping Sean Hayes and his company out on a pitch demo and was wondering if you could find me some extras. We're all doing this as a favor to Sean." (The crew went from the season finale of JORDAN to working on Sean's pilot EIGHT DAYS A WEEK. And everyone loved Sean and Todd.)
Truth be told, I jumped at the opportunity, because I was a huge Sean Hayes fan. During my time at Central Casting, I cast a few episodes of WILL & GRACE. I worked for free on the pilot and I found myself on set. (Though, they gave me a nice gift certificate.)
Part of my job on CROSSING JORDAN involved me communicating with the directors with requests and notes from "the office." Asking, "how many more shots do you have on this scene" may sound like a question, but in actuality, it meant, "how far behind are you right now?"
On the day of the Sean Hayes shoot, I found myself at video village with Merry Donner, our script supervisor and the director. After the yell of "cut" during a particular take, I said, "that's not going to match what you've already shot. Everything else was shooting from the other direction and we're losing the light."
I watched as the director's eyes narrowed on me and I realized, this is NOT the JORDAN set. I quickly backed up and laughed, saying "I am SO sorry! I didn't mean to say... I am so sorry--" and I quickly ran away.
Five minutes later, two men approached me and asked me, "who ARE you?" I explained I was doing the extras casting and I had worked for the showrunners on JORDAN, where I had just enough rope to hang myself, but never tied it around my neck. (And I always realized that our directors tolerated me, while teaching me. But I had known them all since the pilot.) We looked up and the action of the shot went back to the original plan. Turns out, there had been a heated conversation about changing the action just prior to my pontificating and the director had won. For that one shot.
The two men were Rob Mello and Todd Milliner. Rob was the head of development for Hazy Mills. Todd was the "Mills" with Sean as the "Hazy."
"So you're a writer. Got anything good?"
They brought me in the next day. I originally pitched them THE HIVE (which Sean loved and Todd hated) and a week later I pitched them THE BODY FARM.
BODY FARM was developed for a few months and the day of our first pitch session at CBS? The writers' strike started. Awesome.
A year later, we took it back out and went to a dozen studios. But no one was interested in a show about three women who sell dead body parts on the black market. The show died a slow painful death. The day Hazy Mills called to tell me it was dead, I found a lump on my testicle and discovered I had cancer.
"This is how I'm going to die," I thought.
But I beat cancer. I spent a good year recovering and taking account of my life deciding, "I'm just going to make my own damned movies."
I had written screenplays for producers that went nowhere under a very small stipend or even worse... "free option." (That's right boys and girls... not only do you get to INTERN for free, but most deals in Hollywood are the "free option," where a producer options your script for FREE so they can try to get it made till they get the money to pay you. How's that coffee looking now?)
Yes, I got screwed. But getting screwed is what got me angry. Getting angry is what made me start my own company.
Over the years, I trusted the wrong people. I invited people to join me on my journey who had no idea what they were were doing and then turned me into the villain once I tried to detach myself from them. I began to think everyone in this town was crazy. People get really crazy once you call their bluff.
Three years later, Hazy Mills is taking my pilot back out again under the title MORTIFIED. A lot can happen in three years. The entire landscape of television and cable has changed. Three years ago, anti-hero shows were frowned upon. Today? Seems like every show on television involves an anti-hero. WEEDS? DEXTER? REVENGE? RINGER? HOMELAND?
Today I'm in the process of trying to fund two feature films I'm producing and directing that I wrote (one a horror, HELL HOUSE and the other a film about the porn industry in the early 90s involving the lives of Chi Chi La Rue and Joey Stefano). I'm also writing a thriller and researching for a script on the tragedy at Kent State in 1970.
I wouldn't have the wherewithal to produce a movie if I hadn't sat in over a thousand production meetings. I wouldn't have my knack for storytelling if I hadn't sat in the writers' offices of ALIAS at midnight on Fridays, waiting for the first Limited script for the next episode to be released. I wouldn't know anything about editing, if I hadn't hung out in the bays and listened the stories about "how we used to do it." I wouldn't know the fine art of dealing with actors if I didn't sit in the make-up trailers on location while everyone bitched about the long hours. I wouldn't know you don't want to bring your entire cast in for the first shot if I hadn't sat in AD trailers at 2:00 AM while they crunched a call sheet over cold coffee.
I wasn't supposed to be a casting director. I never wanted to be a casting director. I wanted to be a writer. (And eventually get back into acting...)
I wouldn't know anything about casting if I hadn't asked to work for free in the summer of 1991. I could have just gone to see THELMA & LOUISE for the tenth time.
I blame Cynthia Stillwell for everything that I am today.
So to the BLACK SWAN interns: here's the best advice I've learned over the years:
1) Never trust anyone. Then you're never disappointed.
2) "It's just a f#cking movie, bro." - Harry Knapp, THE OLDEST LIVING CONFEDERATE WIDOW TELLS ALL.
3) If someone throws you under a bus, stand up. Hunt them down. And destroy them.
4) The intern you call security on today, will be running Todd Phillips production company tomorrow.
5) The best way to get fired off a project is to write a four-page single spaced letter, detailing all the different ways the executive producer can go f#ck herself. (THE LONE RANGER. Trust me... it worked like a charm.)
6) Don't run at the trams on the Universal backlot with fake blood and stab wounds screaming, "help me! Help me!" (Looking at you, Tara Ochs.)
7) Be careful when picking assistants.
8) Say "yes" to everything in the beginning. Say "no" to everything later.
9) Your experience is what you make of it. Whether it's interning or battling cancer.
10) If you want something done, do it yourself.
And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that toward the end of my time in casting, whenever I would butt heads with someone in production over something that I knew was simply impossible, I would say, "If you can find someone who can do my job better, hire that person. And let me know who they are, so I can quit my job and go intern with them, because obviously they know something I don't." I must have said that a dozen times. And it always shut the other party down.
It was because of interning and working for free that allowed me to have the opportunities I have in my life.
I hope you realize you've effectively shot yourself in the face in Hollywood. At this point, you're on your own. No one will trust you to work with you.
The best you can do at this point is apologize to everyone and have a nice, tall glass of Shut the F#ck Up. And the best part? It's free.
Love,
Chad Darnell And the World
p.s. You should have sued Fox Seachlight because BLACK SWAN sucked.