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INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF FILM & TELEVISION

Downloadable e-Booklet Los Angeles, California July 15, 2012

A GUIDE FOR ACTORS

How To OPEN DOORS in Hollywood
IAFT mentor

by Frederick Bailey

There’s that old joke about the movie business… INT: DARKENED COMEDY CLUB - NIGHT Spotlight on: STAND-UP GUY/GAL (open mike in hand) When I first took off for Hollywood, my dad pulls me aside andsays to me, “You want to know what opens doors in Tinseltown? You really want to know? I’ll give you two words.” (hold for a couple of beats, eyes darting expectantly) “PUSH and PULL!” ROAR of LAUGHTER. STAND-UP GUY/GAL basks in it. CUT TO: Reality. For actors, it’s pretty hard, prying those doors open. reason: an excess of competition. The

Back in the old days, when movies first gotrolling--talking about the 1920s here, and probably all the way up through the ‘50s--the percentage of the overall population that wanted to hoof it to the sandy shores of California and make it in the movies was fairly

Opening Doors in Hollywood/F. Bailey

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negligible.

There were a lot of people in the country fantasizing But the ones who actually drifted

about the silver screen, yes.west in search of their dreams--well, there just weren’t that many, comparatively speaking. Nowadays, after decades of mass exposure to screens big and small, the percentage of people who think maybe they have a shot at it-that number has grown exponentially. Constant contact with TV and

now the internet has given more people the idea that it might be possible… Maybe it is. But there’s anotherpercentage at play on this field. The number

of people who succeed divided by the number of people who try. That percentage is still a small one. You ever heard of Alfalfa? His real name was Carl Switzer, born Carl was a loony kid

in 1927 into a large Illinois farm family.

with a lot of self-confidence, a natural-born trouble-maker and entertainer. He made himself the center of attentionsinging offIt was the middle of the

key at shindigs and church picnics.

Depression, but that didn’t stop people from going to the movies, and the OUR GANG shorts were always popular with the popcornmunchers. In 1935, Carl and his family took a trip to Los Angeles to visit relatives. He talked his father into letting him see if he could
(a.k.a. THE LITTLE RASCALS),

get into OUR GANG

sothey went down to the No surprise,

studio without bothering to make an appointment. they couldn’t get in. Doors closed.

So they went into a café

just outside the gates and Carl started singing to the lunch crowd.

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He delighted everybody there. the studio, Hal Roach.

And that would include the head of

That afternoon, Roach had Carlwritten into the next script. Rechristened Alfalfa, he was in front of a camera within a matter of days. The title of Alfalfa’s first OUR GANG short was

Beginner’s Luck. Unfortunately for the rest of us, it doesn’t happen that way too often. For the rest of us, it takes sheer doggedness. And that

means…don’t let anything stop you.

As actress Ruth Gordon once

put it: “Never give up, andnever, under any circumstances, no matter what--never face the facts.” She took her own advice and

kept at it, and when she was in her early 70s it won her an Oscar for best supporting actress (not that it matters). Why don’t we take a look at a few stories about how certain actors managed to find a way through the gates and onto the studio lot…

TRUE STORIES ABOUT HOW SOME ACTORS CLAWED THEIR WAYIN
Robert Patrick and I both ended up doing multiple pictures for independent producer Roger Corman, which is how we met, back in the late ‘80s. Robert’s second movie was doing a major supporting

role in a road-warrior picture I’d written called EQUALIZER 2000. It was probably one of the worst movies either of us ever did, but it was a blast while we were shooting, and I got to see the...