Film Courage: This is a common question I ask but it usually ends up having great results,
and that is of your IMDB credits which one whether it was a short, TV series or whatever,
taught you the most and why without naming names?
Wendy Kram, Owner of LA4hire: I feel like each one taught me and it’s really from
the people that I worked with that I learned so one of the things I feel like my first
job where I worked for a producer I felt was a master at cultivating interest in projects
so he knew how to generate interest and position and learned in cases where I might have missed
out on a and I say one project that I sold (which was such a great high) it was at a
time that I was told it was at a particular network that they had spent their financing
for the fiscal year and we had an option on the book and it was about to be option and
also they said “We’re not doing period, we’re not doing period.”
And I wound up saying but this reads (to the president of the production company this reads
to hip, this reads so contemporary.
Most women would die to do what to do what this woman did back then.
And my boss was like “Be careful.
You shouldn’t be so boisterous with the president.
Anyway to make a long story short, I wound up speaking to the network where we had a
deal and go the president of the company and got her VPs on board and they wound up optioning
the book and it was a series so there were going to be three books.
Sadly there was a regime change after we started the process and we did get a first script
and then the regime decided they didn’t want to do anything and that happens in the
business and that’s unfortunate but it is part of the business and hopefully you just
continue to build on the successes and you’re always going to have failures.
If you learn from your failures…and in that case sometimes there are things outside of
one’s control but I learned was to have the courage of my convictions.
I remember there was an executive at the ABC who had said to his group and they did really
wonderful programming “If we’re going to fail, I want us to fail big because we
tried.
Not fail because we were scared.”
And if you look at any network and breakout shows they were taking risks and going against
the grain whether it was MARRIED WITH CHILDREN, X-FILES was on, there was nothing like that
and then everybody wanted to copy and do something like X-FILES.
And I remember the sale of X-FILES was the head of the network saying to Chris Carter
“I just want you to do what you want to do.”
So that was brave for the executive in hindsight (we can all say that is fine) but he was really
encouraging the pure voice and creativity of that particular writer and boy when you
can follow your vision and your passion and you have combined with the talent to deliver
and the support and it becomes iconic and it becomes part of our pop culture and everything.
So I really felt strongly because of that reward that I would always follow the courage
of my convictions.
So I think it’s really important to do that.
With other movies I would say I learned from a really intelligent boss writer/director
who is no longer with us that just not to have a lazy mind and never go for the easy
solution.
He was great with development and with whatever stories we had and I learned so much from
him was to really look at the authenticity of how a character would behave and not go
for the obvious, easy, generic solution.
So that really taught me to be diligent and find the unexpected behavior in characters
and I could be here for a long time and I think our greatest teachers are working with
other people who are good at what they do.