HOLLYWOOD IS NOT A DOT.COM PHENOMENON.

I once partnered up with a Miami entrepreneur who read tales about all the ordinary Joes who made a lot of Hollywood money. He rationalized that he – Mr. cell phone reseller with over $100,000 in monthly business – could just as easily make a shitload of Hollywood money. And why not? He had a load of street smarts and he loved the movies! He spent $20,000 on an editing system and digital camera he knew nothing about, as if that was an indication of commitment for the business. He thought, “hey, I’ll shoot my movie, I’ll edit it myself, and then I’ll go to Sundance and sell it for a million dollars!” But he severely lacked the immersion: the storytelling skills, the film history, the technical art to filmmaking, the set experience. All dreams and no craft. After six months, he went back in Miami to be a beer distributor. He thought his street skills would get him through, but he didn’t realize his lack of academic intelligence and utter disrespect for learning the craft would do him in. You have to be smart to be in this business AND you have to have a resilience and tenacity longer than the hack dot.com entrepreneur. Yeah, there are some dumb and shady people who think a love of movies, unskilled business acumen and a lack of discipline equate to being artists, but those people always find the exit door much sooner than they think.