Here’s the main points of my storytelling career.
I was raised by a stand up and a comedy club booker in SF.
My babysitters were hungover comedians who took me to the zoo to do Mystery Science voice overs for the shit-tossing gorillas and on other days they took me to Chinatown to barter with the chain smoking shop owners over knock off Gundam robots. Not a normal childhood.
All the comedians used VHS cameras to film their lives, so I naturally became the kid with the video camera, making shorts and documenting my life.
Before I was ten, I knew what I wanted to do with my life: make movies.
So I applied to filmschool with letters of recommendation from George Lucas and Robin Williams. Not trying to name drop here, but I grew up around both of them. *Long story. Will write more detailed posts about it later.
Soon after that application process, I got my first lesson on Hollywood politics.
It creates a culture of desperation that threatens to consume everyone.
The dean of the film school called my dad to make a desperate deal:
I’ll let your son in, if you can get my script to Robin Williams. My Pops politely refused and told me to pick another major.
So I studied history. After college, I went right into the all-work-no-pay PA grind.
Almost got fired from an Ashton Kutcher reality show called, Beauty and Geek, for sneaking handles of Popov vodka onto set so The Geeks could party with The Beauties. It ended with an awkward threesome, some cracked ribs and a set-wide hunt for the vodka smuggling culprit. Another story for another time.
But I quickly realized that climbing the production ladder to a creative position could take years, so I went back to making my own stuff again.
When in doubt, just go back to being a kid with a video camera.
Around this time, my best friend from high school called and said,
“Hey. I’m a roadie for Barbara Streisand and my job is to sell her paintings to fans, but then I usually end up getting drunk and going home with those nice older ladies. I need to escape this shit. It’s getting bad. You’re doing the film/TV stuff, right? Can I come join you? I’ll do anything, I just don’t ever want to have a real job.”
And that’s how I got my first writing partner, an Italian doofus with great hair who somehow looks like Adam Sandler, Mike Meyers and Dave Grohl all at once.
We moved into a Hollywood apartment above the 101 freeway and started producing comedy shows at The LA Improv, where we met Adam Devine and the rest of The Dudes from Workaholics.
Wild time. We partied after every late night comedy show and tons of stand-ups in that crew went on to become huge names. Again. Stories for another post.
But we had our stars. All we needed was a little money to make a web series.
So I borrowed $7,000 from my uncle who was running a boiler room in an old porn studio in Chatsworth. We didn’t know any of this illegal shit was going on at the time, but we literally shot the web series, and the Comedy Central pilot in a Costco-sized porn studio right next to the biggest dildo factory in the country.
After our show got picked up by Comedy Central, my uncle got raided by the FBI. If you do some internet sleuthing, you can find a TV doc they made about it.
My writing partner and I thought we were going to be implicated in this bust, but the blue and yellow jackets never showed up at our door.
We rode a rocket ship into Hollywood as my uncle got tossed in the slammer.
I used to be embarrassed about this origin story, but now I straight up own it.
Epic failures and mistakes are way more entertaining than success stories.
But my first big deal ended in another lesson on Hollywood:
Middlemen run Hollywood & writers have ZERO leverage.
If we had not signed with a big law firm at the 11th hour of our Comedy Central deal, there’s a good chance we could have been packaged out of our own show. Not because the agents or anyone involved disliked us, they just didn’t need us. We were dead weight and not worth a piece of the backend. I learned the hard way that Hollywood is full of cutthroats and you have to watch your back, sides and triple check your contracts at all times.
What followed was an insane 7 season run and a decade of development hell.
Two drunk idiots from San Francisco gripped onto the coat tails of the Workaholics dudes and snuck into the Hollywood game with no experience.
Got signed by one of the big agencies and got sent all over town on generals.
We pitched everyone. Requested Diet Cokes and mixed nuts in every board room as a running joke.
But we were still young and dumb and had no clue that the stars, planets, mandates and mergers have to align to sell another movie or show.
We kept pitching and writing and pitching, thinking it was a numbers game.
We’re in the biz now! We have EP credits. We created a hit show. All we have to do is get the right idea to the right person, right? That’s how it works, right?
Nope. Took 7 years of unpaid work and pitching to get another project made.
I wish I could have all of those years back. So many almosts. So many scripts. So many actor attachments. So much heartbreak. Endless development hell.
Not complaining here. It’s like this for everyone. Just telling you the truth.
However, the Hollywood game was starting to feel more like a gambling addiction, not an inspiring and rewarding pursuit of creativity.
Now I was becoming the desperate one and I started…
Molding my ideas to fit their mandates.
Watering everything down to their liking.
Sucking up to people I did not like or respect.
Giving my creative sovereignty away to middlemen in temporary seats of power, and then becoming more bitter and resentful by the day.
But I kept trying because I still believed in the Hollywood system.
And while all of this head down hustling was happening, a perfect storm was brewing that would change the game for good.
Trump. Me Too. DEI and a mandate shift away from bro comedy to new voices. All of this combined to sweep through Hollywood like the French Revolution.
And it needed to happen. The Hollywood revolutionaries shed light on tons of dark secrets, and got rid of the evil and deeply embedded creative aristocracy. Twas a good purging. I understand and accept why it all happened.
Now before anyone jumps to any conclusions or criticizes me for pulling the SWG card… Fuck off. I’m from San Francisco. If I came home naked on Christmas, covered in mud and high out of my mind on LSD, my parents would laugh and hose me off. If they ever found out I was not being Ted Lasso level supportive or inclusive to other storytellers, they would disown me on the spot.
Don’t care if you believe me or not. I know who I am and I know my enemies.
The path to Hollywood success was closing for me, but I had a decade long run and it was time for other writers who don’t look like Vikings extras to take some of those shitty pitch meetings. Now I kinda feel like Robert the Bruce’s leper dad, giving advice from the shadows to all of my non-SWG friends on overall deals.
Since the mercenary showrunner path was no longer a viable option, I started coaching up and coming writers while I figured out what to focus on next.
And I fell in love with it. Became a much better human by mentoring all kinds of writers, too. Found it way more enjoyable than writing new scripts. That also led to me running the HBO fellowship, where I made friends for life with my cohort.
After years of coaching, I built up a legion of great writers from all walks of life.
But every writer from every demo kept asking me the same question:
“I have a stack of great scripts to share, but I can’t get anyone to read them.”
Turns out, the door wasn’t just closing on the old SWG’s like me, it was closing on everyone.
Right now, if you’re not an A-lister, nepo baby or being fast tracked through a fellowship, it’s damn near impossible to break into Hollywood.
It feels like a castle that was under siege, and quickly shut its gates to protect the people already inside.
I still have a little faith that the next gen of leadership can right the ship, but I’m not waiting around for that. I have hundreds of talented writers and big name actors in my network who are ready to blaze a new trail. If any of them get tapped for a big TV show, I encourage them to go for it and make as much as they can before the ride stops. And it is a fun ride when things work out.
For the rest of us, we only have our good ideas and each other.
And I think that’s enough to build something special. Something more equitable for artists. Something that empowers and educates while also entertains.
But first, I have to go back to the thing that’s always led me out of the darkness…
Being a kid (or a man/dad now, I guess) with a video camera and fucking around with new and old friends.
Building a low budget movie studio for up and coming storytellers is my Camelot.
And I will die trying to build it…
Unless my wife makes me get a real job and then the death will be more on the inside (metaphorically).
But I see the fog-shrouded outlines of a new story castle forming on the horizon.
I’m headed in that direction and wide open to meeting any like-minded bards, wanderers, rogues, witches and troublemakers.
Thanks for reading,
Connor
PS: Ending with on a much darker note, but I want to write an expose on the epidemic of dorky scumbags in Hollywood.
Do you know the type I speak of? Highly educated virtue signaling fake feminists who were ignored by women in high school and the minute they get into a position of power, they become tyrannical predators. Scumbags. One of the main reasons I don’t want to work in Hollywood ever again. There’s so many of them, they outnumber the real men who are actual protectors. They all patted themselves on the back for being “inclusive” yet they all belong to a highly exclusive club that continues to abuse people. They closed the door on me, so I’m going to set my sights on them. Fuck’em. They’ve put Hollywood on life support with all of their hack writing and clever quips. But give me a radical queer communist revolutionary comedy writer or a Fox News binging Florida dentist who self publishes political thrillers on Eaglegunfreedom.net and I’ll help them both find the wisdom behind their rage. Help’em both reach a wider audience by telling more empathic and entertaining stories. But put me in a writers room with a bunch of chinless, spineless, two-faced Daily Show loving cowards who tweet with the trends then talk mad shit behind people’s back….
Well… that’s when my berserker blood starts to boil.
That was a great read