Internships in this industry don't even need the word "unpaid" to proceed them because I have only heard of one paid internship in the whole town (at my company). Job adds for unpaid interns usually read something like this:
"Looking for bright, self-motivated intern to commit at least 20 hours/week. Great opportunity to really get your foot in the door and learn the basics of entertainment industry! Looking for someone with a great sense of humor, ability to multitask, and eagerness to learn. Must receive college credit."
Here is the breakdown of what this really means:
Looking for bright, self-motivated intern---SELF - motivated, not monetarily-motivated
to commit at least 20 hours/week---we will never learn your name for less than 20hrs
Great opportunity---great opportunity for US to get free labor...FREE!!!
to really get your foot in the door---and then right back out, more like dip your toe in the pool because there is no room for you here
and learn the basics of the entertainment industry---you get to listen to us do possibly cool things while you file stuff
!---we are fun and like to use exclamation points!
Looking for someone with a great sense of humor---to make up for our lack there of
ability to multitask---there are a lot of things we don't want to do that you will have to...sometimes more than one at a time
and eagerness to learn---we want you to be enthralled by all of our stories and what goes on here, what we do
Must receive school credit---we don't want to feel bad about not paying you...not that we would...oh yeah, and it's the law
This all sounds very cynical and is probably slightly unfair since I did have a really good time at most of the internships I completed when I was in school. One of them even ended up being such a great experience, I chose it as a career within the industry. I cannot say the others were not worth it because there is no other way I could have felt so comfortable completely eliminating them as career options for myself. The worst and/or most useless thing I had to do as an intern was count the number of trash cans that were scattered about the set of a reality show I was working on. To this day, I don't believe there was a reason for this. If there was, it didn't matter because when I went to report back to my supervisor the information I had so proudly gathered, she was busy and never asked for it in the future.
I guess I tell you all this because the theme of this post is true: Hollywood assistants like things about Hollywood assistants. This notion does not stop with assistants. In fact, this is just where it starts. It just grows and spreads the more years you are a part of it. I am determined to evade this level of self-importance and self-interest (as some are able to do), although I fear this post is not really proving my commitment to that determination.
Perhaps the greatest display of all this and my inspiration for this entry is this blog entitled, "Stuff Hollywood Assistants Like":
http://www.stuffhollywoodassistantslike.com/2008/09/brunch.html
And let me tell you something, it is dead on. I guess that is why it is so funny. It is like watching a gentle/tasteful roast of yourself, funny and strangely enjoyable. And who in LA doesn't enjoy a good episode of "Entourage"? Sure it is good television, but there is something different watching from this perspective.
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On a completely different note, I am on Ron Paul's mailing list, and I got an email from him this afternoon that I wanted to share. This is just a small bit of it, but I thought it was interesting. It is on the economic crisis going on right now:
To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end... It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.
The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.
The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question?
Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a "rescue plan"? I guess "bailout" wasn't sitting too well with the American people.
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