- I ended up getting a job at MTV
and decided to drop out,
never looked back.
Stay in school everybody.
I'm Dan Levy on set with Bustle
and these are the moments that made me.
I would give or take 93 to 95.
I was 10 to 13.
I would put on these productions.
I would get my cousins involved,
I would get my sister involved
and we would put on either plays or skits.
That's sort of when I learned to micromanage.
We did a great production of Cats.
The year is 1999,
I am a terrible high school student
and instead of doing what I was asked,
which was writing an essay on a book
that I was reading in class,
I instead wrote a short story about my experience,
writing this essay from the voices within the book.
I took a risk
and my English teacher at the time was handing out
the papers graded to the class
and stopped on mine,
told the class that this was an example
of thinking outside the box.
And while it did not fulfill the mandate of the essay,
she gave it a 99%.
And that was the first moment
where I felt emboldened to write.
So it was in and around 2001,
I had a dramatic kind of relationship situation going down
and knew that I had to make a big change in my life.
I moved to London for about five to six months,
worked at a talent agency out there,
which is something I very quickly realized
I did not want to do long-term
but what it did do was pull me out of my shell.
I had to answer phones,
I had to be social
in ways that I would normally kind of be reclusive.
I came out of that experience far more confident
than when I went into it
and decided to audition for MTV,
got the job.
So you can connect the dots of your life
through various moments
and I wonder how many people's starts
are connected by way of failed relationships.
In and around 2002,
I was too nervous to audition for theater school,
instead went into film
'cause I thought at the very least I could put myself
into my own films.
Had no idea how clicky the film school experience would be
and as a very sort of socially anxious person,
particularly at that time,
I didn't ingratiate myself in the way that you need to
and so I ended up getting a job at MTV
and decided to drop out,
never looked back.
Stay in school, everybody.
This is, you don't...
Stay in school.
The year was, well, it was eight years ago,
13,
nope 12.
Jesus I'm stupid.
The year was 2012,
I had just come out to Los Angeles
to try and make something of myself
and I brought this little idea to my dad,
about a wealthy family that lost their money
and had to start over again.
When we first pitched the show,
everybody in America passed on it.
So it wasn't until we went back to Canada
that we found a network,
the CBC, that bought the show
and then Pop TV here in America jumped on board
and then it became a thing.
In fact, one network bought the show in the room
and then passed because of the name.
So this is where we're at, with TV.
Our show won nine Emmys this year,
which was an experience that we did not see coming
and yes, I was very fortunate to win things myself
but I was way more excited about my co-stars
and my fellow producers.
You know how hard they work,
you know how much energy was put into making this show.
What it was and I think when you have a show
that's this small,
that has such a small budget in the scope of TV
and what we were up against,
to think back-on on what we did,
was pretty amazing.
My two cents in terms of how to stay sane
through the process of pursuing
any kind of professional endeavor
in an entertainment or creative arts field
it's just to know that nobody has power over you.
'Cause I think we can be kind of funneled into believing
that we are at the mercy of executives,
when in reality those executives
wouldn't be where they were,
if it wasn't for the ideas that were created by the people
who walked into those offices.
Go and do something, go and do something,
way outside of your comfort zone.
Do something crazy,
responsibly crazy.
Responsible, be responsible.
Stay in school.
(upbeat music)