Dream of Hollywood Career Lures Crowd to CSUN Event

Dreams still come easily to Alyse Wax. At 18, she’s an aspiring television writer. Her most vivid dream of the moment involves “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” the hit Warner Bros. TV series.

A few weeks ago, an agent gave an approving read to one of her unsolicited scripts for the show. Wax told herself not to get her hopes up; after cold-calling her way into an interview for a “Buffy” internship last fall, she was passed over because she has no car.

Still, she could not resist telling her father to “go buy that Armani tux” so he’d fit into it when she accepted her first Emmy.

In short, the USC freshman and Valley native is precisely the kind of person administrators at Cal State Northridge hoped to attract to a daylong conference on landing a job in the entertainment industry--confident enough to envision a place for herself in the Hollywood dream factory, resourceful enough to take advantage of insider advice and resilient enough to realize that rejection comes with the territory.

“Of course, it would be great if I could come here and have them tell me who is going to buy my scripts,” Wax said as she milled about the registration table Saturday with the 170 other conference attendees. “But the industry is so big and changing so fast, I’m sure I’ll find something interesting.”

Sponsored by CSUN’s 18-month-old Entertainment Industry Institute, the sold-out conference provided panels of professionals to dish out advice to students and mid-career job changers on how to break into the business that has become Southern California’s biggest employer.

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Institute Director Lani Daniels said that even though most people initially want to work in the industry as film writers, actors or directors, she designed the conference to draw attention to less glittering, often overlooked fields, where job growth is currently greatest, such as accounting and theme-park management.

But judging from the low turnout at panels on those subjects, compared to the packed houses for the glamour fields, few conference-goers appeared to see their future in Hollywood wearing a Mickey Mouse head or haggling over the cost of deck chairs on the next “Titanic.”

CSUN President Blenda Wilson said the school is focusing the institute on the breadth of jobs available in the industry because that is where CSUN can make its mark.

“We don’t want to do something that results in producers and directors and high-profile people like USC does. And we don’t want to focus on entry-level technical positions like Santa Monica College does. We want the entire middle of skilled professionals,” Wilson said.

Wilson said that if the institute is successful, CSUN will offer classes at studios; internships that allow students to work in the industry while they are going to school, and research projects that team professors with industry professionals.

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The day started out with an upbeat keynote speech by Robert J. Dowling, publisher of the Hollywood Reporter, who described the entertainment business as unique in its “egalitarianism” and “really open to everybody.”

“No one knows how to make a successful film,” he said. “You have as much chance to do it as anyone else. . . . You can go and buy the New York Yankees if you want to, but you can’t buy success in this business.”

Dowling chronicled the explosion in entertainment media, including cable television, interactive games, start-up networks like FOX and WB, as well as the expansion of American companies into global markets.

“These are all new sources of money that are looking to create a product that generates a profit,” Dowling said. “They will all need people.”

But he cautioned the conference-goers not to expect doors to magically fly open for them, particularly early in their careers. The Writers Guild of America registers 30,000 new scripts each year, he said, but only about 450 feature films are released annually.

A panel called “Using the Studio/Network Human Relations Department: How They Work, What They Look For” featured Romelle Ecung of DreamWorks SKG, and Kat Fair, who handles recruitment for Nickelodeon, with practical tips on preparing a resume: Forget the fancy graphics because they won’t reproduce well over a fax machine. Don’t put your name on the first line of the page, since it could get cut off when copied. Make sure to provide a current phone number.

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Ecung also explained that at many studios resumes are not read but scanned into computers for later search by key words. So it pays to research positions desired and word the resume accordingly.

Fair reminded the audience of the fine line between persistent and obnoxious: “If you call someone every day, they won’t take your calls anymore . . . About once a week is all that would be good.”

Paying dues is a given. At DreamWorks, Ecung said, she frequently interviews former attorneys who would happily work as entry-level production assistants, but meets recent film school graduates who turn their noses up at such bottom-rung jobs.

The theme resurfaced in the panel on “Careers in Post-Production,” where speakers explained how they moved up because they weren’t too proud to take pay cuts or to work without pay if that brought them closer to the jobs they really wanted.

“You have to volunteer to do things for free with a lot of enthusiasm,” said Lloyd Martin, vice president of sales for Todd-AO Video Services. When he was starting out, he said, he told those in the department where he wanted to work: “I don’t know anything about your department, but I want to learn.”

The workshop called “Getting Your Foot in the Door,” with two freelance script analysts and the publisher of the Entertainment Employment Journal, was packed. The speakers echoed themes brought out in earlier sessions, including the old credo about being nice to everyone because you never know who might end up being your boss.

Deanne Koehn, a story coordinator at DreamWorks who got her start as a receptionist, reiterated that “the people who are successful here are the people who persevere.

“You will work for more idiots than you thought possible on the planet. You are nicer than they are, you are smarter than they are, but you know what? Do your job anyway.”

At day’s end, Alyse Wax said she had gleaned several useful tidbits. She plans to look into the possibility of freelance script reading while she completes college, and she took to heart the admonition from Adele Scheele, director of CSUN’s career center, that any student who doesn’t take an internship is “stupid, dumb and guilty.”

And she was reminded of her initial rebuff by “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Kathleen A. Milnes of the Entertainment Industry Development Corp. told the conference-goers it would be hard to get ahead without a reliable car.

Plus a pager. And voice mail.