The Hollywood Commandments Read online

  •Most important of all, never forget that your talent comes from God. Remain open in your spirit to His guidance. He will show you new ways to use your gifts, new areas in which you can apply them. If you’re listening, He’ll correct you if you let ego take you off course (although the correction might be a little unpleasant). Pay attention for those signs that it’s time to transition, to take your talent in a new direction or to a new organization. Remember, your talent is on loan from Heaven. Invest it wisely.

  THOU SHALT

  »Pray for humility.

  »Try to help your church nurture talent beyond the pulpit.

  »Network to find new constituents.

  »Pursue virtual mentors.

  »Recognize and live in the confidence that you ARE talent.

  THOU SHALT NOT

  »Let anyone put your talent in a box.

  »Phone it in.

  »Envy those with greater talents.

  3

  YOU HAVE TO CARRY A CROWN BEFORE YOU CAN WEAR ONE

  You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.

  —Woodrow Wilson

  In the summer before my junior year of high school, I ended up working for a nonprofit organization in downtown Oakland called OCCUR (Oakland Citizens Committee for Urban Renewal). My aunt Sondra Alexander ran the nonprofit along with the executive director, David Glover. David went to Howard University and was roommates with Takashi Bufford, who at that time had written and produced the box office hits Set It Off and Booty Call. I wanted to learn from others in the industry I wanted to be in, so I asked David if he could arrange a meeting between me and Takashi, and he did. Takashi was terrific. He encouraged me to become a screenwriter, but I told him I didn’t feel like that was my calling. Then he said, “If I were you, I would try and get an internship with Handprint.”

  At that time, Handprint Entertainment—run by Benny Medina, Jeff Pollack, and James Lassiter—was one of the hottest management and production companies in the business. Their clients were some of the biggest names in entertainment, including Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, Babyface, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, and Jennifer Lopez. Benny Medina is one of the most successful managers in all of entertainment, a legend who helped transform the careers of Babyface, J-Lo, Mariah Carey, and many others. He was also notorious for having high standards (code for “difficult”). I put in my resume with Jeru Tillman, Benny’s assistant, and a few weeks later I got a call to come in for an interview.

  I interviewed with Dale Ottley, the general manager, but we didn’t get off to a great start. The moment I walked in, Dale held up my resume and said, “Look.” I had put my head shot on my resume, thinking I was being cool (a real facepalm moment), but she had drawn an “X” through my picture. She said, “This isn’t a modeling agency. There are some people who won’t hire you just because of how you look.” Whoa. I was eighteen and thought I knew what was what, and I was getting an education!

  However, we rebounded from that when she asked, “Why do you want to be in entertainment?”

  I said, “I want to be in entertainment because I want to make change.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “You want to make money?” It was a funny miscommunication that I quickly corrected.

  “No. Well, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with making money. But I’m not talking about that kind of change. I’m talking about making change in the world. Entertainment is one of the most powerful industries in the world, and if I can be a part of it and actually make content, I think I can bring change to people’s lives in a positive way.”

  Dale really liked that, and we had a good conversation. Then she said, “Is there anything else you want me to know?” And I heard God speaking to me: Tell her about the Sabbath.

  In my spirit, I replied, No, I’ll tell her about the Sabbath after I get the internship.

  He insisted: DeVon, tell her about the Sabbath. Trust me. I took a deep breath and said, “There is one more thing. I observe the Sabbath from Friday night sundown to Saturday night sundown, and if taking this job requires me to work on the Sabbath, then I’m not going to take it.”

  She paused, and I think my heart stopped for a second. I thought, Lord, why did you do this to me? I’m trying to get my foot in the door, and now it’s about to close. Then Dale said, “No worries. We can work around that.” That internship was the key that unlocked the door to my entire career. It also introduced me to the next Commandment:

  You Have to Carry a Crown Before You Can Wear One

  Before you can lead, you have to serve. God has an extraordinary destiny in mind for you, as He does for all of us. You might have been told that you will do great things, and I have no doubt that you will. But both God and man have a learning curve. God will never bring you an opportunity before you’re ready to make the most of it, and the career world demands that you prove yourself. The idea is simple: having a great purpose doesn’t mean you’re ready to fulfill it today, and there is much we can learn while we’re working in that direction. I would discover this firsthand while I was working at Handprint.

  DRIVING MR. MEDINA

  On my first day working at Handprint, they didn’t have anything for me to do. My “office” was a sort of kitchen/file room without a comfortable place to sit, and I just hung out there with no instruction but constantly afraid of doing something I had not been asked to do.

  But as the hours passed, I thought, I have my foot in the door. The onus is on me to make something of this. What am I going to do? I started doing the only thing I knew how to do: serve. I went around to all the administrative assistants who helped the managers, introduced myself, and said, “I’m the new intern. Do you have anything you need filed or faxed?” The assistants were delighted that someone was willing to help them get some paper off their desk, so they gave me things to do, and I went to work. I quickly figured out that Handprint didn’t even have a filing system, so I created one.

  Taking the initiative to help the various assistants out helped me build strong relationships with them. Assistants are the “gatekeepers” in Hollywood (and in many industries). People often only look at the person whose name is on the door while they overlook the assistant, and that’s a mistake. I’ve seen careers crash and burn because someone misjudged who is and isn’t important. It’s dangerous to disregard or disrespect someone as insignificant because of his or her title. Today’s assistant is tomorrow’s CEO, and everyone remembers how they were treated on the way to the top—and who treated them well or poorly. Treat the gatekeeper like the person who owns the gate, and you’ll go much further.

  It was clear that if I was to become successful, I needed to serve everybody without regard for position or title. I did everything I could do to make everyone’s day easier. I got their coffee. I got their lunches. I ran errands for them. I copied scripts. I filed papers. I did everything possible to be as helpful as I could be. It worked: Handprint liked me so much that after that school year ended, they wanted to keep me. But the work was still unpaid, so that summer I worked in the dean’s office at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and at the Gap at the Beverly Center mall so I could afford to the keep the internship.

  I was hungry to become successful in entertainment, and I was willing to do whatever I could (legally and without compromising my faith) to make it happen. I knew that if I was going to be successful, I needed professional and spiritual grit, which is defined by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology as “Perseverance and passion for long-term goals.” Most people don’t fail because they lack ability but because they aren’t willing to dig deeply and long enough to see their goals come to fruition. Real success takes guts, courage, and conviction. Even when it’s painful, you have to keep pushing because you know where you’re going, and you’ve made up your mind that no force ca
n match your determination.

  As the internship progressed, the assistants began to put me in a position to have more responsibility. Then one day, Benny Medina’s assistant told him, “DeVon’s really good, and he wants to do more for you to get a better sense of how entertainment works.”

  Benny said, “Cool. Have him drive me.”

  Hold up. How in the world was driving Benny around a good opportunity? Wasn’t it just subservience? No. It was actually the opportunity of a lifetime. Benny was and still is a king in the entertainment business, so while others may have viewed being his driver as demeaning, I knew it was my chance to get what I wanted most: firsthand experience and inside information. Driving Benny around would give me direct access to him and the inner workings of Hollywood—an education more valuable than anything USC could offer.

  With that, when I was in the office I would serve as Benny’s driver and third assistant. I shuttled a top Hollywood mover and shaker from event to event, meeting to meeting. This was right after The Notorious B.I.G. had been murdered, and Benny was managing Sean “P. Diddy” Combs. Benny would do most of his business in the car on the way to meetings, so I heard how to do business, how to get deals done, how to handle high-level talent, how to handle difficult personalities, and how to market and publicize talent. It was like a mobile master class! I couldn’t help but think, Lord, you do move in incredible ways!

  By serving Benny, I was laying down my foundation. If I wanted to have the kind of influence and impact that Benny Medina had—to wear a crown of my own—I had to help him “carry his crown.” So many times, we go into a job saying, “How are my needs going to be met?” But if you want to rise to the top, do the opposite. If your main goal is to be of service to the needs of whomever you work for, your needs will be met in the process.

  WHAT IT MEANS TO CARRY A CROWN

  Service often has a negative connotation. We want to be the one at the top, calling the shots, making the decisions, getting the glory. But it’s useful to step back and look at examples of people who took the service mentality to heart. The greatest example of this is Jesus, who said, “. . . Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all” (Mark 9:35, NIV). His whole life was an example of someone who could have sought glory and power but instead sought to serve everyone.

  Look at King David. In 1 Samuel 16:12, the prophet Samuel anoints David as the next king. But David doesn’t immediately go and sit on the throne or look for his crown. After being anointed the next king, David goes and serves the current king, Saul. In Samuel 16:21, it says that Saul makes David his armor bearer, which was a position of service. He had to serve a king before he could be a king!

  Take the example of my friend Erica Greve, founder of the charitable organization Unlikely Heroes, which rescues children around the world from sex slavery. She was already in a program at UC Berkeley to become a social worker—a service profession—when she counseled a girl who had been sexually assaulted and decided to serve more intensely by starting an organization to help children in foreign countries who had no one to turn to for help. But even that wasn’t enough. Erica chose to serve at an even deeper level by personally going to dangerous places like Nigeria and Burma to counsel and even physically rescue girls who had been kidnapped and sold into slavery. That is a true passion to serve, and it’s a passion that has inspired celebrities like Selena Gomez, Babyface, and Macy Gray to become avid supporters of Unlikely Heroes.

  In the church, we look at examples like these, and we talk about two important things: destiny and service. We talk about having a destiny that’s ordained by God, that is, set down by God specifically before we were even a glint in our mother’s or father’s eyes. That’s true. You do have such a destiny. We also learn the importance of service, and how service to others is an important part of following Jesus. Many times, service is defined through the lens of community service, and while serving the community is incredibly important, what is often missed is the lesson about how taking on a service mindset is a requirement to achieve our destiny—and how committing to the process of success itself is essential to achieving a successful career and fulfilling the call on our life. Just because God has ordained that you’ll one day be CEO, that doesn’t mean you can just expect it to happen without preparation. We saw in the last two chapters how crucial preparation is, and part of that preparation involves service.

  Serving someone first is an obstacle that many folks can’t get around. Ego can be a career killer. I’ve come across many people who proclaimed the desire for success but lacked the ability to humble themselves in order to achieve it. Too many people walk into a job thinking, “What can I get, and how can I get it fast?” I’ve been tempted by similar thoughts more often than I even want to admit. For example, when I became a studio executive, I remember obsessing over how fast I could climb the ladder to become a senior executive, not realizing at the time that no matter how much I wanted it, I was unprepared to do a senior executive’s job. We forget that even though being a superior might be already written into our life’s script, in order to achieve it we must spend some time as a subordinate.

  As Christians, one of the bedrocks of our faith is service. Jesus commands us to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That means, “Treat your neighbors’ needs with the same importance as your own.” We serve because we have been called to serve, and to do so in all aspects of our lives: in our relationships, with those who have less than us, and in our careers. When we only apply this idea to community outreach, we miss out on the value this idea can bring to our lives. If we never bring an outreach mentality into our career pursuits, we will be missing out on our God-ordained success. How good is the outreach you provide to your colleagues? How well do you service the needs of your superiors? If you view service as something you do only as part of your church or youth group, you will miss what service can do to help you progress toward the career you’ve been praying for.

  WE ALL SERVE SOMEONE

  The other key idea I want you to remember as you think about service is that we all serve someone—usually, many “someones.” It doesn’t matter if you’re the CEO of the company. It doesn’t matter if you’re the owner of a professional sports team. Even as someone might be serving you, you are also serving others—and even as you are serving, other people are serving you.

  Wait a second. That’s a huge idea and bears repeating. Even as you are serving, you’re being served in return. You might be an assistant to a senior executive at a Fortune 500 corporation and feel like all you do is take care of other people’s needs while they get the glory. But the executive you serve is serving you simultaneously. How? By giving you the opportunity to learn, grow, and gain access to the very thing you want to do.

  We are, all of us, wound up together in an intricate web of service. Wealthy business owners serve their customers. Legislators serve their constituents (or at least, they’re supposed to). Famous actors, musicians, and writers serve their fans. We all serve somebody. So, nobody gets to complain about having to put in their service time because it never ends. You’re always going to be serving. It’s just that the higher you climb, the better the rewards for that service can become. And the better you become at service, the more successful you will be in the long run.

  The danger comes when you forget that in all professions, at all levels, you’re in service. You could be at the highest position in your organization or in government, but if you go into it thinking, “I am here to serve myself,” not only will you not be as successful as you could be, you may sabotage yourself. Look at the guys at Enron. Look at Bernie Madoff. Look at anyone who’s been brought low because they made it all about themselves and stopped caring about the people they were supposed to be serving. That never ever works out in the long run. Here’s what I know:

  When you exalt those whom you serve, you ultimately exalt yourself.

  False Idols

  It’s dangerous to believe that service in and of its
elf makes you virtuous. Serving selflessly and honestly is a virtue, for sure, but serving does not make you a better person than the one you serve. I hear this kind of talk sometimes as a way for people to express their frustration with being in a menial job with low pay: “I’m so much better than so-and-so.” True, Matthew 23:11 says, “The greatest among you will be your servant,” but that’s about all men being equal before God. It doesn’t mean that because someone is a success they are automatically egotistical and corrupt—in other words, not worthy of your service. Avoid that kind of thinking and serve as best you can. Great service, ultimately, is the greatest gift you can give others and yourself.

  SERVICE VERSUS SERVITUDE

  Troy Carter is a friend and former colleague of mine. We both were at Overbrook Entertainment around the same time, assisting Will Smith and James Lassiter in various capacities. The thing about Troy was, he always had a service mentality: he was upbeat, optimistic, and committed to helping whoever needed it the most. Yet even while he serviced others, he had a vision for where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do. After leaving Overbrook he started his own management company because he had a passion for servicing artists. His first major client was Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta (a.k.a. Lady Gaga) and the rest was history. Troy’s reputation for service led his company, Atom Factory, to become one of the top management firms in entertainment.