The Hollywood Submarine

A guest speaker came into my movie development class the other day and I have to be honest, I haven’t I have recovered yet. He is a well known writer who wrote Shrek and is in the middle of writing a new Disney movie starring Tom Hanks and Tim Allen.

This writer was able to successfully describe what it's like working in Hollywood. He said, "Working in Hollywood is like working on a submarine. Once it descends you don't come back up for a long time and then you are stuck down there. Slowly your food supply disappears and eventually you come to hate everyone you are stuck with."

This made me question why people go into this business; a business where we are all stuck on the freaking yellow submarine. Sure the Beatles song, We All Live in a Yellow Submarine, makes it sound fun but I'm sure they were not singing about the Hollywood Submarine.

The writer continued to share more of his thoughts about Hollywood. He said, "The best writers are usually the ones who are the darkest. They are the ones that want to commit suicide." Well thank you sir, so if I want to become a great writer in this town then I have to be on the verge of suicide? I don't even know where to go to buy a noose in this town.

You could tell our professor was a little one edge as this writer kept talking about the dark side of Hollywood. She would try to get him to say positive things about the business but somehow he always came back to relating Hollywood to some black hole where you only go if you lost your mind.

I am hopeful that as I talk to more people in this business that their views of working in Hollywood won't be so dismal and suicidal. If I don't find happy people who work in Hollywood then I guess I'll just have to suck it up and hop on the damn submarine. Let’s just hope it's not the same submarine Charlie Sheen was on.