This is a series of articles I've written about writing, specifically about the problems faced by (a) the new writer who isn't selling enough work yet to make a living or (b) the older writer who isn't selling as much as they used to. To read other installments, click here.
If you want to have a career as a writer, it is very important that you not look desperate. If you are, do what you can to conceal it…and yes, I know that might not be easy, especially if you're really, really desperate.
This applies to the wanna-be writer who hasn't sold much, if anything. It also applies to the once-established writer who's hit a career lull and hasn't sold anything in a while. It's probably more important for the latter. If you're new in the business, you have more of an excuse for appearing desperate. People who might hire you or buy your work can think, "No one's given this kid a chance." If you have some credits then what they're going to think is: "Gee, people have given this guy a chance and if he's now this desperate, maybe his work isn't that good lately."
Desperate people make others uncomfortable. We try to avoid them for the same reason we sometimes give money to homeless people on the street so they'll go away. But in The Arts, we don't usually give jobs to desperate people to lessen their desperation because they may not be able to do those jobs. In fact, we often suspect the reason they're desperate might be because they just don't have it in them to do those jobs. And if we give them those jobs and it turns out they can't do them, that creates bigger problems for us.
And unlike the homeless guy outside the CVS Pharmacy who went away after you gave him a buck, these people tend not to go away. They come back again and again begging for another chance.
So you don't want to look desperate and one good way to achieve that is to not be desperate, at least financially. We've discussed that in previous installments of this column.
The story I'm about to tell you is is not about a writer. It's about a guy who was doing (or trying to do) cartoon voices but it's the same situation. Because I was casting voices for a cartoon show I was writing and producing, he came after me seeking work. He came after me at conventions, via e-mail, and then when that didn't work, he started phoning me.
He was not without talent. He had enough that he'd landed an agent…but there are agents and there are AGENTS. He had an all lower-case agent, one of those who has limited clout or connections to sell anything. There are agents like that who represent writers, too. They'll take on almost anyone who looks competent enough to maybe someday get a job, then they do almost nothing to make that happen. If the client somehow manages to get a gig through his or her own contacts and campaigning, the agent will step in, close the deal and take their commission.
(What kind of agent do you want? The one who is in touch with the people who do the hiring, be they producers, directors, casting people or whatever. You want the agent who can and will get those people on the horn and say, "Trust me. You've got to meet with [YOUR NAME HERE] because this kid has really got something!" And then the hiring person thinks, "Gee, that agent represents some really good people. It probably won't waste my time to take a meeting with that client!" If it's an agent of the "anyone who looks competent" criteria…well, that agent probably can't get that buyer on the phone and if they do, their recommendation means very little.)
In the world of voiceover in Hollywood, there are about fifty-five agencies. About nine of them represent about 90% of all the actors who work a lot. They're the top agencies that represent the top people. I won't list these agencies but if you go to voicebank.net, you can browse the demos of most voice actors and find out who their agents are. There, you can easily look up the superstar cartoon voice actors and see which agencies represent a significant number of them. You can also hear the demos.
I'll leave it to you to figure out who the superstar cartoon voice actors are.
Tomorrow, if I was hired to cast voices for a new cartoon show and I wanted submissions of candidates to consider, I'd make a list of the actors I want to audition because I think they'd be right for the show. They would probably all be with one of those nine or so agencies. When I called to book them for auditions, I would also let the agents recommend other clients, especially those new to the marketplace, that they'd like me to consider.
In the highly-unlikely event that I couldn't cast the show with those nominations, I might call a few of the other agencies…though I don't think I ever have.
For the sake of this story, I'm going to refer to the actor who took to nagging/stalking me as Herbert. Herbert was not with one of those nine-or-so agencies and indeed, throughout his relentless campaign to get work out of me, the agent he did have never once called me to make a personal pitch for Herbert. It probably would not have mattered if he had.
Herbert introduced himself to me after one of my Cartoon Voices panels at Comic-Con. He talked a mile a minute about himself, telling me how talented he was and quoting others as saying how talented he was. Call those Mistakes #1 and #2.
If someone's trying to sell you a used car, a high-pressure sales pitch usually makes you suspicious of the product and it's the same if the product is someone's talent. Your high opinion of your work is meaningless. I mean, it's not like you're an unbiased critic of you. Some really lousy people think they're terrific and that kind of self-promotion can also suggest ego problems that might make the person difficult to work with.
Also, Herbert said, "I studied with [NAME OF VOICE TEACHER] and he said I was the best student he'd ever had." I had never heard of that teacher but even if I had, the same questions would have rapidly came to mind…
- Did this teacher really say that?
- Was this teacher trying to get you to pay them for an advanced course or more lessons when they said it?
- Or just being nice? Or trying to get rid of you nicely by telling you what you wanted to hear? It's easy to say such things when you don't have to back them up by hiring someone.
- And most of all, why should I care what that person thinks? What matters here is my opinion. I'm not going to hire you because they liked you.
Herbert, of course, had a CD of his work in hand which he wanted me to listen to. I gave him a business card with my P.O. box address and told him to mail it to me so I wouldn't have to carry it around. (These days, we don't even use CDs. Today, he'd give me a business card telling me where I could go online to listen to his demo.)
That wasn't enough for him. He began doing voices for me, then and there. I stopped him and said, "I don't do auditions in convention halls and besides, I have another panel to get to." He thanked me about eighteen times and let me go.
Fifteen minutes later, I had an e-mail on my iPhone from him. It thanked me for the nineteenth time and gave me a direct link to hear his demo online.
Okay, fine. The kid's enthusiastic and more than a little pushy. Simple logic would tell you that doesn't mean he isn't a good voice actor. But I have to tell you — and maybe this is unfair — I assumed he probably wasn't that good or he wouldn't have had to resort to this kind of in-your-face salesmanship to get a job. I am not at the top of the voice-hiring business. I am darned close to the bottom and haven't cast a show in over a year. It's not my main line of work; more like an occasional adjunct to my writing career. If he was coming after me this way, it meant he'd probably struck out repeatedly with the folks who cast lots of shows and probably with all the top agents, as well.
That was Saturday at the convention. Sunday morning, when I awoke and checked my e-mail, there was another message from him. He wanted to know if I'd heard his demo yet and if so, what I thought of it. At the end, he added in one of those "jokes" that you just know the person is making to try and plant a serious idea. He wrote, "Do you have a series yet I can star in?"
Later that day at the con, I ran into two agents from one of the best of the ten agencies and I started to ask them, without mentioning his name, "What do you do when you have a guy who's nagging you to death to listen to his demo and maybe represent him and telling you how brilliant he is?"
One of them instantly said, "Herbert." Then the other one said, "I was thinking of Herbert but it could also have been…" and she mentioned four or five other names. Then the two of them engaged in a short debate over which of the wanna-be clients who pestered them was the biggest pest. If I wanted to be a cartoon voice actor, I don't think it would be good for me to get myself on a list like that.
I asked them both, "If someone is like that, what are the chances you'll listen to his demo and decide he's really good and you should sign him up?"
One of them said, "Zero." The other said, "It could happen but I can't think of when it ever has." Neither one could explain for me the connection between overselling and not being good enough in the talent department, though one added, "When I think back over all the really good people who came to us, not one of them came to us that way."
Herbert e-mailed me every day to ask what I thought of his demo. I finally gave it a listen and it wasn't bad…but "not bad" is not enough in that business; not when you're competing with people who are "real good." On the show I was then doing, I had a talent pool full of "real good" — four or five regulars plus about twenty people I occasionally used in guest roles. Based on his demo, there wasn't a thing Herbert could give me that one of them couldn't do — as well or better.
I told him that in a return e-mail in polite but firm terms. He responded by calling me, thereby upping the level of pushiness. He wanted to convince me he had new voices and skills that weren't on his demo. He called me a few times and hit on me at other conventions before I finally had to tell him to leave me alone. The last time, I said, "And if you keep annoying people the way you're annoying me, no one will ever give you a break." That, he understood and I haven't heard from him in a few years, nor have I heard a thing about him. He is not listed among the actors on Voicebank.
As I said, it's not completely logical that a guy who's too desperate will turn out to not be too talented but it seems to happen most of the time…and if that overly-brash guy turns out to be talented, the way he behaves can still make you wonder, "Do I really want to work with this person?" When we're talking about writers, I think those who hire tend to respect the writer who doesn't engage in the ol' hard sell and who lets the work speak for itself. Sometimes, it may just be because they're a refreshing change from all the Herberts out there.