Michelle Simone Miller:
Welcome everybody. Thank you guys so much for being her with us. We're so excited to do this panel. Wonderful. As you start to trickle in, you see that we're all here. I can't wait to introduce everybody. My name is Michelle Miller. I'll probably say that again. But thank you guys for coming in. Thank you guys for being a part of this panel. We're very excited. Just ignore, I mean it's seven PM. I knew this would happen actually. So it's seven PM everyone. So that's what we're hearing right now, all the thank yous and the knocking.
Michael Pitt:
That's pretty good.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yeah, it's great. We have a lot of banging on the pans and the pots. It's really great. Normally I would participate. Do you guys have this, everyone, on your end?
Tammy Milcowitz:
I am in...
Michelle Simone Miller:
I know Stan you're in the suburbs, I assume, so it's probably a bit different.
Stan Brooks:
I think we have a lot of sunbathing and yawning, actually, in Los Angeles, but it's not seven o'clock yet, so who would know.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Oh, that's true. That's absolutely right. It's only four out there. We have Stan Brooks on the West Coast, the rest of us are in New York, so we're all going to get a little bit of this for a while, which is great. Welcome everybody. Thank you guys so much for joining us. So to start off with... We have so many people from Brandeis here, which is great because that's actually who I'm going to start thanking first. Hi. So thank you guys, my name is Michelle Simone Miller. I graduated class of 2011. I'll be your moderator today. I'm an actress and communications coach here in New York City. I want to thank a few people before we start. Nicki, as you'll see, she welcomed everyone here, and the rest of the Brandeis Alumni Association, thank you guys so much for helping put this together. Couldn't put this together without you. Ingrid Schorr, she's part of the Create@Brandeis Living Room Festival, which we are very excited to be a festival pre-festival event. So it's starting this weekend. Please take a look at the schedule. There's some really great alumni and current students a part of that.
Michelle Simone Miller:
And I'd like to thank also the Brandeis Arts Alumni Network. We have these Facebook groups online. Please feel free to be a part of it. Ingrid has put the site for the festival schedule as well. Wonderful. So we're going to start off with, as people start trickling in, I have a couple poll questions just so we as a panel know are you a current Brandeis student, are you a Brandeis graduate, or are you other; family, friend, et cetera, partner, any of that. So we just wanted to have an idea of who's out there, who are you, how are you fitting in with this. We have a couple poll questions tonight. Thank you, Matt, for posting the site for the... This is great. Matt Krinsky is here with us from the Arts Alumni Network.
Michelle Simone Miller:
So as we continue, I also wanted to add, I'll probably introduce the schedule in a second as you start answering the poll, but there will be a question and answer period at the end of this. We have the chat box and the question and answer box on the bottom. If you could try to direct your questions to the question and answer box, that's what I'm going to primarily try to check. I'll try to glance over at the chat box as well. Wonderful. We have mostly 63% Brandeis graduates, 17% Brandeis students, wonderful, and 20% family, friend, parent, partner, other. Lovely.
Michelle Simone Miller:
We have one more poll today we wanted to do. Someone alumna, not current. That's not a big deal. It's fine. The next question I wanted to know is are you interested in entering the entertainment industry, like breaking in, or moving up in the entertainment industry? Or is it just a general interest, you were interested in this panel, the people involved? But we want to know because the entire panel's really situated on both, breaking in and moving up. And we'll cover both topics in this panel, but we wanted to get an idea for you guys. Are you interested in breaking in? Have you not done this before? I assume a lot of current students maybe specifically are doing that. And then maybe you're trying to navigate the world and you're doing something in the entertainment industry and you want to pivot or you want to try to change courses. So we wanted to have an idea where you were as an audience. Wow, we have 94 participants so far. Thank you guys so much. So we mostly have 39%... it's pretty even actually. 39% are breaking into the entertainment industry. We have 33% moving up, wonderful. And just a general interest, 29%. Well, pretty even in that regard. Lovely. Lovely.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Welcome. As people start coming in, again, I'll introduce myself. My name's Michelle Miller. I'm class of 2011. We have the most amazing panelists here. I am so very excited. This has been a dream of mine to put this together just because I really wanted to really seep into the Brandeis alumni network that we have for this industry. And these people are all so wonderful. I've been talking to them, some for years. Some I contacted actually initially in 2011-2012 when I graduated. So this is pretty amazing. We will start with, let's see, so this panel specifically, how to break into and move up in the industry. And I will start with my introductions. Here we go.
Michelle Simone Miller:
So Erika Karnell. Hi Erika.
Erika Karnell:
Hey, everybody.
Michelle Simone Miller:
We have Erika from BRS Talent Agency. So she's... Ignore the siren here. New York sounds. She is a prominent agent here in New York, though she is bi-coastal. The agency itself is bi-coastal. They represent clients in film, television and theater, everywhere from series regulars, recurring roles, co-star roles, Broadway clients in everything from Aladdin, The Lion King, Come From Away. I stole this from an Actors Connection bio, by the way, Erika.
Erika Karnell:
Sounded vaguely familiar.
Michelle Simone Miller:
It sounded a little vaguely familiar. But she has clients in all the above, so definitely focus your questions about that sort of thing to here. We have Michael Pitt. Hi, Michael. How are you? Michael's done a bunch of stuff. So he's been an assistant director, and AD, he's been a first assistant director, second assistant director. He's now mostly a production manager, I believe, in television and film. He's done shows, everything from Nurse Jackie, Law and Order, Ugly Betty. He's done movies such as Sex in the City, Baby Mama, Ocean's 8. The list goes on. Your IMDb page is insane, which is lovely. So please take a look at that. I want these intros to be quick, so bear with me.
Michelle Simone Miller:
We have Kerri Berney. Hi, Kerri. How are you?
Kerri Berney:
Thanks.
Michelle Simone Miller:
So Kerri works at NBC. She's the Director, this is a mouthful, Director of Strategic Research, Cross Platform, TV Landscape in NBC. So she's worked everything from a research analyst at Oxygen Media, a junior analyst at Sony Pictures Television. This is just paraphrasing your LinkedIn. It's been great. You're a development coordinator at Scholastic. You've done a couple jobs at Scholastic. And she's has extensive experience in cross platform television research, production, public relations, development. You've also worked at a literary agency before, so there's been a lot of stuff. It's great.
Michelle Simone Miller:
And then we have the wonderful Stan Brooks. Welcome, Stan. Hi. We have Stan who's a director and award-winning producer of film and television with over 30 years of experience. We're very, very lucky to have you. Thank you so much. Thank you to all of you. He founded his first independent production company Once Upon a Time Films, which he has done very many movies, mini-series, including Emmy Award Winning Broken Trail, Prayers for Bobby, which was fantastic. In 2011 he founded his production company, Stan and Deliver Films, which is very wonderfully named, mind you, and went on to produce and direct his first feature film, Perfect Sisters, which was great. Abigail Breslin, Mira Sorvino, definitely check it out. Recently he developed a slew of projects, not only episodes on TV like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., all you Marvel fans on ABC, but also I believe you're in pre-production to the thriller Girl Who Fell From the Sky. If you can tell us a little bit about that at some point, that'd be great.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Welcome all. So that's mostly what I'm going to be talking about. The rest, I hope is mostly you guys. This will be, hopefully a discussion based panel. So I'll ask questions, maybe direct one or two to each of you, but if we could pick up off of each other. Wonderful. So my first question, which makes sense given the title of this panel, what was your first job out of college and what drew you to the entertainment industry. Erika, do you want to start?
Erika Karnell:
Sure. My first job out of college was I worked for a boutique PR firm and my clients were, among others, Toshiba. I was at the launch of the DVD, which was unbelievably cool. And I think my biggest client at the time, the one I worked primarily with one on one was Showtime. So I did a lot of public relations for Showtime, mostly back when there was a satellite division for Dish, PrimeStar, words that have not been used in a very long time. But promoting a lot of their original content, original movies and series back when that was really getting off the ground for them. It was a very long time ago.
Erika Karnell:
And I was drawn to the entertainment industry primarily because it was the only thing I always loved. I wasn't a theater major, I was an American Studies major. I was very much in the inaugural group of film studies program members with Tom Doherty. Actually worked for the department. I was the department liaison for students for my senior year. And then I was president of Tympanium Euphorium, I was president of Brandeis Players. So I ran the gamut; theater, film, television. And then started with PR and then John Buchan recommended that I get into casting. Didn't know how, but I had a family friend who worked for an agency and I started answering phones at the front desk at the Gage Group, which is now half of BRS/Gage, 21, 22 years ago. So I literally started at the bottom, at the front desk answering phone and worked my way up.
Michelle Simone Miller:
That's amazing. That's fantastic. So we have actually a friend of yours here, so I'm actually going to direct this to Kerri now. Kerri and Erika were friends at Brandeis, correct?
Kerri Berney:
Yeah.
Erika Karnell:
Yes.
Kerri Berney:
We were both members of the American Studies department, and I also was part of the film program a year after Erika. So when I was at Brandeis, all through school I was going to go into journalism. All my internships were in journalism. In addition to the film department, I also did journalism as a program as well. And then I visited my best friend from Brandeis in LA because he had graduated the year earlier, when I was senior, and I came home and I'm telling my parents I was moving to LA to work in entertainment. And they said, no, you're not, because I'm from [New Jersey 00:11:36] and nobody from Jersey goes to Los Angeles. Or nobody that we knew. And so I wore them down, drove out a week and a half after graduation and when I got out there, I literally just started calling Brandeis alums, asking for an informational interview. I called Stan's office and I asked his assistant if I can make an appointment to talk to Stan, and he's like, well, Stan's in pre-production for a movie, he really doesn't have time, but we're looking for interns, do you want to be an intern for us? And you'll probably have to drive Stan around someplace and you can ask him then. Which was exactly what happened.
Kerri Berney:
So I got to work in a production office. I got to read scripts, I got to see how, for the first time, how production worked. And I always loved film and television, so it's wonderful, and it was a great easy way to get into the entertainment industry because everybody Stan worked with was lovely and I never had to deal with any of the Hollywood horror stories that you so often hear about when you're an intern. So that's how I got my start. And then I just did everything and tried everything to figure out what I wanted to do, and I'm still looking. So that's me.
Michelle Simone Miller:
I love it. And it's great, because when I asked you guys to be a part of this I didn't know about that connection right away, so how coincidental. And I had a very similar experience when I graduated, again, in 2011, I reached out to Stan. He was one of the people on the Brandeis directory and I was like I'm going to... And he was so lovely. You were so great in answering my call and speaking to me. And not only that, you invited me, I think you had been an adjunct professor the following year at Brandeis. Am I correct in that? You definitely taught a few classes in 2012.
Stan Brooks:
Yes.
Michelle Simone Miller:
And you invited me to come out. So I was really excited. I visited my sister who was still at Brandeis and I saw one of your classes and I was so mad that you did not teach while I was there. I was like this is the best class. So thank you so much for helping so many alum. So Stan, why don't we continue with you. How did you start in the entertainment industry?
Stan Brooks:
Well, I think it's interesting because I was an American Studies major also, and I remain very, very close friends with Tom Doherty and Steve Whitfield, and I don't know that I would be [inaudible 00:13:53] if I hadn't been an American Studies major. Because it was the support of... Tom Doherty wasn't there then, but support of Steve Whitfield who said you can go do this because I came from a Jewish family that sent me to Brandeis to become a doctor or lawyer or go to business school. And the thought that I was going to go to film school, I think, was a horror everyone in my family from mother to grandparents. But I was lucky. I was [inaudible 00:14:17] involved with Brandeis events. So I was chairman of the programing board and I ran film committees and I ran film festivals. And so someone in career counseling suggested I apply to the American Film Institute and I got in as a producing fellow straight from Brandeis. And at that point, the only person who had ever gone to AFI from Brandeis was Marshall Herskovitz. And I don't know that there's been too many other than the two of us.
Stan Brooks:
So I went to AFI and I got out with all the arrogance of an American Film Institute graduate, thinking I was going to get a job as a producer, and after three months of unemployment I took a job in a mail room. And that was the first job I ever had was at a television company called Filmways, which then became Orion Pictures. And the best story is I would have... My grandfather was very close to me and I would have breakfast with my grandfather every Friday while he was a live. And the Friday before my first day at Filmways in their mail room, we had breakfast at the Stage Deli in Century City and he [inaudible 00:15:19] I don't know what I'm going to wear. I'm going to wear a shirt and pants. But he said, no, you're going to wear a tie. I said, a tie in a mail room. No one wears a tie in a mail room. He goes, exactly. He said, and some producer's going to see you and say why are you wearing a tie and who are you.
Stan Brooks:
And that's exactly what happened. Within two days, Rick [inaudible 00:15:36], who was a producer there, said who are you, why are you wearing a jacket and tie? And by the way, everyone else in the mail room was wearing Metallica shirts and cut-off jeans. And so he said I want you to come work for me as my assistant and that was my first job. It was on a show called 240-Robert with John Bennett Perry and Pamela Hensley. John Bennett Perry, who by the way, one of my jobs as the PA on that show was to keep his bratty son Matthew Perry from the craft service table. My first entry was in a mail room, led me to meeting somebody in casting, and then I was a casting assistant. And then that led me to being a reader somewhere. Just once you start meeting people you start meeting people and [inaudible 00:16:26].
Michelle Simone Miller:
That's so helpful. Sorry, there was a little bit of an internet thing at the end. But that was great. Just as a follow up, have you seen anyone in the mail room in the last few years wear a tie and impress you just like you impressed him? Has there been anyone that dressed up?
Stan Brooks:
I am a host for the Television Academy, people that put on the Emmys. The ATAS. They run a nationwide search for interns and we take an intern every year. So we've been doing that for about seven years. And they come into the office and they work for us the same way that Kerri did. And then if we go into production they go on the show with us. And we'll also get them on a set and they'll go over and spend a day at Lifetime and Hallmark. But we read their applications and then we see the videos of the finalists, and I will say that [inaudible 00:17:19] passion and homework. Those are the two most important things.
Stan Brooks:
One, do you really know what Movies of the Week are if you're applying to an internship for my company? Have you seen anything recently that shows that you're really interested in it? And then do you have passion, because I don't want somebody that just wants any internship. I want somebody that wants my internship. And so in the same way that I wore a tie so that you'd notice me, I think there still is the how do you get noticed? And I think one of the main ways of getting noticed is to demonstrate your incredible passion and that you've done your homework. I'm always amazed when people come into my office and haven't seen any of my work. I've made 70 movies and television series and it's not hard to find. When I came into the business there'd be no way for me to find people's credits or go and see something of theirs.
Erika Karnell:
There was no IMDb.
Stan Brooks:
There was no IMDb. But now, the thought that somebody wouldn't have looked me up and wouldn't have seen something of mine before coming to try and work for me is unfathomable and is an immediate [inaudible 00:18:20]. You're never going to be an intern for me. So I still think homework and passion are the two things we look for.
Michelle Simone Miller:
I love that. That's great. I have so many questions in life for everyone. But let's go with Michael. Actually, Michael and Stan know each other as well, correct?
Stan Brooks:
Yes.
Michelle Simone Miller:
So what's your connection, just because I didn't know this until...
Stan Brooks:
I've known Michael since he was at Brandeis. His father and my wife were agents together at ICM. I had a script at TNT for a Christmas movie that was a programer, and it was just going to be a movie they ran at Christmas. You know how many Christmas movies get made. And out of the blue, my phone rings and it's his dad. And his dad was a really, really, really big deal agent that would never in a million years call me because I was in TV and I was nobody. I figured I had done something really horrible to piss him off because the only reason he would call [inaudible 00:19:21]. I get on the phone, I had just had my first child, my first son. He gets on the phone and he says how's your son? And I'm like what is this call about? And then he said, I hear you have a Christmas movie at TNT. I said, yes. And he said, I have a director for you. And I said, okay, who? And he said, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Stan Brooks:
And I dropped the phone. Literally dropped the phone. And I picked it up and I go, don't punk me. I'm being punked. I know. You've got cameras in the room and everyone's laughing now. And he said, no, I'm serious. He wants to direct a family friendly movie and it has to be shot right now because he's got another feature to do, and you're the only one going into production. And Arnold Schwarzenegger directed my Christmas movie, Christmas in Connecticut. So from that point on, his agent became very important to me, and we were very close. Turned out we lived around the block from each other and I was so thrilled when I heard the Michael was going to Brandeis.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Didn't Schwarzenegger later appoint you as chairman of the California Film Commission?
Stan Brooks:
Yes, he did. We stayed very close from that experience, and then I became chairman of the California [inaudible 00:20:22].
Michelle Simone Miller:
Well, there you go. That's amazing.
Stan Brooks:
Was responsible for the tax credit.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Yes, exactly. It's a great one. Michael.
Michael Pitt:
So I started through my father. Like Stan said, was an agent at ICM. He got me my first job when I was 16-years-old. I was working on a movie called Disorderlies. I was a set production assistant. If I remember correctly I made $30 a day. So I did that every summer. I loved it. I enjoyed it. Before the next summer I called the producer that I met on the movie and I said, hey, I'm ready, I need another summer job. And he's like, well, I'm not shooting anything but a friend of mine is, go call him or I'll call him for you and you can follow up. And I did that. And so I was a PA every summer, really through college. When I graduated Brandeis, and I took film classes there, American Studies major.
Michael Pitt:
I went to USC Film School for two years in a producer's program that they had there. And then they got us an internship my second year and I wound up working on a movie called Last Action Hero. So I became an intern on that and then a PA on that. And then met the producer, got along with him. He said my next movie is Die Hard Three, come do that with me. And that brought me to New York and I worked my way up the ladder there. I joined the Director's Guild in '98, I think, and I've done 50 something projects with the Director's Guild as a second AD, first AD, and now a production manager.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Michael, has that been mostly in New York? You found that consistently you were able to work here on projects?
Michael Pitt:
So we're all freelance. I'm based in New York, I certainly do most of my shows here, but some of the challenges that I have with my career and my life is you go project to project in what I do. I don't work for a company. It's all freelance. So I've done three months... I just finished doing a movie in Hawaii for three months. I did a pilot in Chicago for three months. I was in Washington D.C. for three weeks. I was in Minnesota for four months. So mostly New York, but again, I could go anywhere at a moment's notice.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Amazing. Thanks, guys for sharing all that. Please feel free to, again, submit your questions on anything that had to do with them entering the industry, because now we're going to be talking about moving up and escalation. So my next question for all of you guys, and feel free for anyone to answer first, is in any industry, particularly ours, there's always this expectation or hope or even possible disillusion of the linear path. What does that mean? Everyone feels like in any business there's this level up of an assistant, to something, to maybe a director, that type of thing. So for you guys, have you felt like there's been a linear path or do you feel like it's a lot of touch and go, it's a flexible, moveable career for all of you?
Stan Brooks:
I would say that there's no straight path. Unlike most industries where if you're in the insurance business you start as an underwriter and you keep getting promoted, there is no... Everybody you'll meet in the entertainment business will have their own story and their own path. You just heard it. It's interesting, all of us American Studies majors, and yet all of us have wholly different paths. And by the way, for those on this that are still at Brandeis, the takeaway from this is that none of us were theater arts majors, none of us were film majors. And I will tell you that my knowledge that I got from being an American Studies major, having taken classes in architecture and music and art and obviously history and American literature [inaudible 00:24:26] much more valuable to me in my career than anything I learned in film school. Anything. Because if you sit with a composer on a movie in post-production, you're not talking about stuff I learned in film school. I'm talking about having taken a class in Bach in Spingold.
Stan Brooks:
Liberal arts is liberal arts. And those are the tools you want in your tool belt when you get into the entertainment business, not how many foot candles it takes to light up a set. Don't you agree, Michael?
Michael Pitt:
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to...
Stan Brooks:
No, go ahead.
Michael Pitt:
Don't be a film major. Be a life major. Learn about psychology, learn about sociology, learn about history. Learn about how the mind works, different people, different societies. Learn about English. That will make you a more rounded person and you'll be able to tell better stories that way, for sure.
Kerri Berney:
And one thing that American Studies does, and I also, I double majored in American Studies and English, is that it teaches you how to think about different things that you... I've studied a lot of Shakespeare. Shakespeare is difficult because the language is difficult, but you have to be able to translate the language into things that you understand, and that's a lot of what storytelling is and what [inaudible 00:25:40].
Michelle Simone Miller:
It was right there.
Erika Karnell:
Mine's too far away.
Michelle Simone Miller:
No, that's great. That's where I was going with this because I do feel like there is this disillusion of a linear path. Everyone feels like there is something to be said about moving up in the world. And I think for film specifically, there's a lack of that. And I wanted to know what that felt like for you guys. Did you know going in that there wasn't going to be a linear path? Did you feel like on the way you were like oh God, I felt like I was getting ahead and then something happened and then I had to take a job that I thought I was maybe not going to take again, and that sort of thing?
Stan Brooks:
Keep working. Keep working. Take the jobs that are there. Look, I graduated film school thinking I was going to be a producer and I got an interview at Orion Pictures with Mike Medavoy and I thought he's going to offer me a [inaudible 00:26:27] produce, and basically he wanted to say hello because he knew somebody that was on the board of trustees at Brandeis. And I ended up in television because that was the first job I got. And I ended up in the TV movie business because that was the first opportunity I got. That wasn't my career path. I thought I was going to be doing big movies. So the fact that I own my own company and own the negatives and now have a library of 50 films, that was not my path. That wasn't where I thought I was going, but that was where the opportunities were. And as soon as I saw them I wanted to follow that. And so my career path was mail room to reader to assistant to story editor to head of television at a big independent feature company, Guber-Peters. And then starting my own company. And if you were to ask me when I graduated film school what my path was going to be, none of those things were in the cards. Meet anybody you can.
Erika Karnell:
I thought I was going to go into casting and didn't know how. I figured I would try out agenting because it was the other side of the coin, for a minute and then see where it led. I was actually, because I work in a more traditional business office environment, thought I would be moving up faster and was a little bit frustrated. And then actually went to an event with Tom Doherty at Brandeis House and realized how much I missed learning. So I took a two year leave after three years at the agency, still as a barely front desk assistant. I went to NYU, I got my master's in film studies. And then right before I graduated, spoke to my boss who I was still close with and he said come back, we need you. And they created a more hybrid position for me that was a little bit more business affairs than client relations oriented while I worked my way up.
Erika Karnell:
I needed to take this little detour to decide if it was really what I wanted to do. Did I want to go back to academia? And I realized that I found the thing that was right for me, and I was really lucky that I fell into it. But you have to try different things. I don't think anybody comes... There's no program to learn how to be an agent. You've got to start at the bottom and work your way up. There's no other way to train to do that. But I don't think anybody comes out of college or even grad school having, not just a clear idea of what they want to do, which they may have a vague idea, but I don't think anybody has a real clear plan, but also the real wherewithal to get there. Nobody has this five year plan where it's all laid out, and if you do, life's going to throw curve balls at you and it's not going to happen.
Erika Karnell:
So I think in this industry especially, you have to be willing to take the opportunities where they come, willing to utilize the relationships that you have. I always tells my acting students when I'm teaching master classes that the most important thing in this industry is relationships. No matter what position you're in. But talking to people and maintaining relationships and being somebody that people want to work with, and showing up with passion and having done your homework, all of those things are so important. You may look back in 20 years and say this is not where I thought I was going to be, but if you're happy with what you're doing, not having been on a linear or an increasing progression, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Our industry is so unique and can't really be compared to anything else. It's not like being an insurance underwriter and moving up the ladder.
Kerri Berney:
I had, oh gosh, in my first three years in LA I think I had eight or nine different jobs because after I finished at Stan's company, it was great working there but I needed a paycheck because paychecks are important for paying rent. So I temped. And LA at the time, had these temp agencies that were specifically for or geared towards the entertainment industry. So I got to work in the Disney photo labs. I worked for, again, a lit agent's assistant. I worked in a PR firm for the American Red Cross. I did web content on Old Time Radio, which was fantastic. And then when I was working as a junior publicist, the lit agency that I had temped for called me and was like our desk assistant is leaving, do you want the job? And since I did not want to be a publicist, especially for a not-for-profit, I said yes, gave my two weeks notice two weeks after I first got that PR job. And they were lovely, they gave me a card and cake on my last day, which I thought was very thoughtful. And I worked at a lit agency for 18 months, and then I worked as a writer's PA for a Saturday evening television show back when CBS still programed Saturday evenings.
Kerri Berney:
And then I got a job in New York working for a kid's entertainment company, and then I went to grad school, because I seemed to do everything later than everyone else because I was 10 years between undergrad and grad school. And then I fell into research and discovered that I liked it because I get to tell people I watch television for a living. And it was only when I got into research that I saw that there's actually a ladder. Because research is more on the business side of things, it's considered business ops. So I started as an analyst. First a junior analyst at Sony, then an analyst, then a senior analyst, manager, director, and then I moved to my current position, also a director but instead of for NBC Entertainment, specifically for NBC Universal, so I have a broader range of priorities, but it wasn't until year 12 of my career that I found a ladder that I liked and wanted to go onto.
Kerri Berney:
So it's just, as I think you said at the beginning, or Stan said, there's no single path. Everybody's path is different. And that's what makes it great, I think.
Michelle Simone Miller:
I think that's important to note, too, that there's these different roles, which was why I thought you guys were such a great group to do this with because there's such different roles, obviously, in the entertainment industry, and there's different paths, and you guys all have these beautiful, colorful paths that got you where you are today. Kerri, are you partly responsible for Clifford the Big Red Dog? That was a huge part of my childhood.
Kerri Berney:
I was a production assistant on the TV and a production coordinator on the movie. And then we did HBO Family animated series called I Spy and I got to write episodes of that. So I really tried a lot of different things, trying to figure out what I was good at and what I enjoyed, and what would pay me a livable wage. And those three things aren't always in tune with each other.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Absolutely. And then Michael, specifically I wanted to ask you, so with your path, like you said, you have all these credits on your IMDb page, but they all have different roles. It's not like you went from second second AD to second AD and then all you took were first AD roles after that. How did that work for you?
Michael Pitt:
Well, again, Erika was talking just about relationships. So there's a ladder in what I do in terms of second second AD, second AD, first AD. Those are different jobs on the set, but in our world it's really it's not a meritocracy, as I like to say. It's about who you know and how well you know them. And frankly, how well you get along with people. You could do an incredible job on a show and bring it in on budget and on schedule, and your reward for that is hey, job's over, you're out of work. Go find your next job. So that's really important. But you're always looking ahead. You're always thinking this is what I want to do, how can I get there? What's best for me? Should I take this offer? What are the pros and cons? There's a lot to think about. There's a lot to think about.
Michelle Simone Miller:
That's great. I know Erika touched on a little bit of detours in her career. Did you guys, any of you wanted to touch on maybe your favorite detour or something that took you in a different path?
Stan Brooks:
No, I just did one. Go ahead, Kerri.
Kerri Berney:
No, I just said for me it was grad school because I'm not a numbers person. A lot of what I do now is looking at spreadsheets and numbers and visualizing numbers, but I'm not a numbers person. I like the story that the numbers tell me. And so before I went to grad school I had never taken a research class. I knew what Nielsen was just because I read the trades and they talked about Nielsen ratings, but I didn't actually know what that was. And then at grad school I went to Syracuse and they made you take a research class as part of your core curriculum, and I discovered that it was simple math, so the math was easy, and it was really telling a story. And again, I started this whole thing back at Brandeis wanting to be a journalist. So all my life I've been telling stories, but just the stories get told in a different way to different people but it's really all about telling stories. And honestly, that's what most of life is, just telling different stories to different people. Sorry, go ahead.
Michelle Simone Miller:
No, it's great. It is, especially in our industry, everything is about stories. Michael, Stan?
Stan Brooks:
Well, I just made a career change. About five years ago I gave up my [inaudible 00:36:17] company after making about 70 movies and television series, and decided to become a writer-director, which sent me from the top of the hill where everybody was taking my phone calls to the very bottom and starting over. And again, it is, as I think Michael said, it's [inaudible 00:36:37] and it was amazing how many people didn't take my calls and how many friends I didn't have when I was now back in... couldn't get movies greenlit and wasn't making three movies a year at my own studio. But again, your passion and your drive and ambition and your ability to get up off the mat, as I'm sure everybody on this panel can tell you, you're going to get knocked down a lot more times than you're going to be able to talk about.
Stan Brooks:
And I think for me it was the chance to see if I could write and see if I could direct and put myself in that place where I was scared all the time, because at the place I was in my producing career there really were no hills left to climb, no fears left. But I made a big change to having to start over and give myself one more chapter and I'm really enjoying it. It's not easy, but I found out... I had to go reach deep down again and find out what I was made of, which I hadn't done for a while because everything came pretty easy once I'd made [inaudible 00:37:41] come to me.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Excellent. I wanted to ask you, I probably will try to ask you at the end, at some point, about your recent projects, just because that's amazing that you're now directing and writing everything. And Michael, did you want to talk a little bit about detours in your path?
Michael Pitt:
The big one, I grew up in Los Angeles, I went to school in Boston, obviously. I went home after school, I went to USC, and I worked in LA for my first year. I did a movie there, as I mentioned. I met a producer and he's like, hey, my next movie is in New York, come do it with me. And I was like, great. It was obviously a huge movie with a big cast, an incredible opportunity. And that was a tremendous detour. But how do you... Someone says, hey, come work on a Die Hard movie, can't say no to that. So I went to New York and I met a bunch of great people. I remember we finished that movie in December and my boss came up to me and said, hey, I've got this other show in January, it's in New York, January, February, March, April. You're great. I love you. Come do it with me. And I flew home and I'm like I guess I'm moving to New York. And I flew back in January and I did that show and I basically stayed ever since. And I had no idea that I was going to be in New York for 30 years of my life, no idea. It just happened.
Stan Brooks:
Michelle, it's really important to notice that all of us have had relationships at Brandeis that paid off. One of Michael's really good friends is actually a really close friend of mine and he's done actually two movies for me and they went to school together. And my roommate, Mitch Albom, has done projects with me as well. You never know, even your Brandeis friends, [inaudible 00:39:39] they're valuable relationships, and that's why you want to stay in touch with and you want to network as much as you possibly can with as many people possible because you just don't know. Mitch left Brandeis to be a musician, to be a piano player. So the fact that he and I worked together on a book he wrote, that's not where we ever would have imagined when we graduated. And I'm sure Michael and his friend Jason who's worked for me, is one of my close friends, one of his close friends, when they left Brandeis they didn't know where they were going. Certainly when I met Jason he was still at USC Film School.
Michael Pitt:
And I-
Michelle Simone Miller:
Go on.
Michael Pitt:
... sorry. I remember taking a class with Professor Doherty, just to talk about Brandeis for a second. And I got a D on my first paper at the only film class at Brandeis. And I had done 10 shows at that point. I remember getting so angry and I wound up taking the class pass-fail. So just another example of you just don't know. You just don't know.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Well, so on that note, sort of a similar note about relationships and networking, do you guys have any advice, a little bit, on how to keep... Obviously a lot of this, and they always say the entertainment industry is all about who you know and relationships. How do you cultivate these relationships, how do you continue? Stan, like you said, you're now writing and directing and all of a sudden you had to leverage these relationships in a different way. So what are some things you've learned about staying in touch with people, making sure they're authentic relationships still, you're not just using them for whatever they can give you but you're cultivating them overtime? Do you guys have any advice for our listeners?
Kerri Berney:
I know for me, that first of all I find it much easier nowadays with email and texting as opposed to when I came out of school it was all phone and I'm rubbish on the telephone. Even after spending two and a half years at an agent's desk I'm still rubbish on the phone. But what I learned is read the trades, find out what people are doing. And when you see something in the trade, congratulate them. I'd recently reached out to my old boss at Scholastic just because they rebooted Magic School Bus and I hadn't spoke to him in several years, not because we didn't get along, it just hadn't come up. And I'm like, I should rekindle that relationship. So I reached out and emailed him that I thought it was great that they were rebooting Magic School Bus, so that started a dialog. And so now every so often we get lunch. But it's just figure out a way to keep in touch organically, as opposed to, as you said, making it seem like you want something.
Erika Karnell:
I think even when you've left someone or someone has left you, we're a midsize agency, we had been a boutique agency so we've had people who we were their first agents and then they wound up with much bigger agencies. Where Michael's dad works. It's really important if you had a good working relationship with that person and they've left you for business reasons, to not allow that to impact the personal relationship. So you don't need to get together all the time, but a client that you had a good relationship with who's gone somewhere else, books the lead in a TV series or gets a Tony nomination, if you're still in touch with them, if you still have their contact info, it's a wonderful opportunity to reach out and say I'm so happy for you. I'm so proud of you. You never know when that person is going to have another cast member that's looking for a new agent that might be a huge opportunity, someone you want to work with. And you want to be known within this business as somebody that people want to continue those relationships with. It's not just about leveraging them, but it's also about the genuineness of it.
Erika Karnell:
I've told stories in the past of having, at one point, had a client that worked with everybody in the business exactly once, and that was it. Somebody who was super talented and kept getting cast and kept getting jobs, but no one ever wanted to work with that person again after working with them once. The work product was great, ultimately, but they weren't pleasant to be around. I think that calls back to what Michael was saying, that you want to be the person that people are like, not only do you do good work, I really like the person that you are. I really enjoy spending time with you. I want you on my set, I want you in my office, I want you in my corner. You're somebody that I want to maintain those relationships with. And I think that's really important is-
Stan Brooks:
And Michelle, if you get the opportunity to have contact with somebody who has some of consequence, who has some relationship [inaudible 00:44:45] has history and can be beneficial to you, if you get that chance to get them on the phone, as you and I did, as Kerri and I did, you always want to be specific about hey, I'm really thrilled to have this opportunity to talk to you. This is where my career path, I think, wants to go. Do you know anybody that does this? Do you know anyone that can get me into a mail room at an agency? Or do you know the first job I could get in PR? Or I really want to be below the line, how do I get into the DGA program? The worst phone call for someone like me is hey, I love show business, what should I do? What you should do is figure out what you want to do and then call me again. Because I can't do anything with that information.
Michelle Simone Miller:
It's great advice actually, because like I said, I reached out to you Stan, but I also reached out to Michael in 2011 as well. And I felt like... I knew I wanted to be an actress, but I was like Michael is there anything you can do? I didn't really have anything specific. So this is great advice for everybody, by the way. But Michael was still super sweet and was like I don't really know how I could help you, but do you want to be a PA for a day on this movie I'm doing with Morgan Freeman? So I was. I was a PA for the day and I didn't know anything about that, but I loved it. I loved being on set, and I really do appreciate that. But it is great advice to know, for everybody coming out of Brandeis or even just coming up, have a specific idea in mind of how they could help you. And as well, in terms of concluding what you guys were saying about reaching out to people and not having to just feel like you're leveraging contacts, also contact them when things are good. Also feel free to congratulate them, to compliment them, and have a positive back and forth. And that's fantastic advice, I think, for everybody.
Michelle Simone Miller:
I'm going to start actually going through some of the questions, which I'm really excited about. I have a question for Michael. So this is Amy. I have experience in production management and stage management, but only in theater. How does one take those skills to have a similar position in film and TV?
Michael Pitt:
Wow. I've only been film, I've never done theater. I find theater absolutely fascinating because it's live and there's nothing like the energy of live. It's a very different world. It's union wise and also just logistic wise. I'm sure the skills are very, very similar. I'm sure if you've got experience in theater that you would pick up film and television very quickly. But you may have to start a few levels below, but you would rise, obviously, very quickly with that experience. But I would definitely say yes to any opportunity you get if you want to segue into that area. And again, you may have to start a little lower than you wanted to, but you should rise fairly quickly.
Michelle Simone Miller:
That's great advice. I'm getting a lot of questions about scripts and writing. So if one has an idea for a script and has a script bible, a spec script, how do you take it to the next step? How do you get it to the right people?
Stan Brooks:
Erika, you want to answer that? I'm happy to jump in on that, but Erika you're an agent.
Erika Karnell:
Not my world at all.
Stan Brooks:
So I'll take that. The truth is actors act, directors direct and writers write. So don't be precious. You can't write one script and say this is it, this is the greatest script I'm ever going to write and if nobody reads it... You just got to keep writing and keep trying to get it out to people. And there are certain places that will read unsolicited and you got to do your homework and get on the web and find out who will and who won't. One of the advice I give to my screenwriting fellows at AFI is... here's a little trick that I know for a fact a lot of my AFI screenwriting fellows has done, which is if you want to get into series television and write, all series have to, by guild determination, give out at least one or two episodes to freelancers so that it's not a closed club.
Stan Brooks:
And if you watch [inaudible 00:48:48] television series [inaudible 00:48:52], there's anything from executive producer [inaudible 00:48:55] to a story editor, which is usually buried in the end credits. The difference is that all those people are in the writer's room. They're all breaking story, they're all doing the exact same job at the beginning, but they're getting paid different, they're getting different credits. But they're all in the same room. And that story editor's never getting a phone call. No one's ever calling him. They're calling the show runner, they're calling the executive producer, and they're calling [inaudible 00:49:10] because they're the famous ones. If you want access to that writer's room, the same guy that's going in there with no access and no clout is also in that room, breaking stories and writing episodes. So that's one of my little tricks is look for the person at the bottom of the totem pole. They're thrilled to get a phone call.
Michelle Simone Miller:
That's great. If anybody... Well, I'm going to go through some of these because there's so many and they're great ones. I have one question from Arnon, I hope you don't mind me shouting you out, but I know you. So he said he's gotten a lot of success in the indie world, but that's not really paying the bills as much. So although he's gotten some success in going up the ladder, so to speak, how do you get on the Hollywood ladder? How do you start producing and being part of bigger films that pay more? I know, it's a hard one.
Stan Brooks:
Well, Michael's the best at...
Michael Pitt:
I was going to say Stan, you should take that one.
Stan Brooks:
Well, Michael's been on the... I haven't been on as many big movies as... The truth is, it's like seguing from TV to features. It's all about leveraging relationships. And so what you need to do is take those relationships that you've got in the indie world and try and... If there's an actor that makes his way into a television series or makes a name for himself, that's been in one of your projects, go find something for them. Or if there's a screenwriter that was small and did an indie for you and now is a bigger writer, go and find a project with them. My mentor was Peter Guber and he always said that the commodity of our business are good stories. And so if you have one, it doesn't matter where you are in the business, someone's going to come find you. And so read a lot. Find some great piece of [inaudible 00:50:50] piece of material in a magazine or a newspaper and then leverage that with somebody you know. I think that's how you get out of indie up into the Hollywood world. But by the way, indies can do well too.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Indies can do well too. Indies can go... Absolutely.
Stan Brooks:
And by the way, there are a lot of people in the TV and the feature business that would be thrilled to be in the indie business.
Michelle Simone Miller:
That's true. That's so true. This is more, I think, for Erika maybe. Any advice for kids or teenagers starting out in the entertainment industry as actors? What advice would you give to kids and teenagers starting out?
Erika Karnell:
There are specific agents that specialize in working with kids and teenagers because there's all sorts of additional labor laws involved, and having to have tutors on set. Some of the bigger agencies have children's departments. Here in New York, Carson-Adler is, I would say, the absolute best children's agency. Nancy Carson has been at it forever. She is top of her field and has been for decades.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Did she work for you at the National Association of Talent Representatives? I know Carson Kolker is there.
Erika Karnell:
Yeah, she's a NATR member. She's a NATR member. I think in general, if your kids want to work professionally, find someone who can be your advocate, I think, more so for children than even for adults. Because you are going to need somebody who can help you navigate all of that.
Stan Brooks:
I was blessed to work with Abigail Breslin, Georgie Henley, Gary Coleman, a lot of famous young child stars. And there is great pitfalls in that world. And I think one of the things you have to be is have somebody you really, really trust that can help you navigate, that knows what they're doing. Seriously, within the last week someone said, am I supposed to be paying an agent [inaudible 00:52:53] me? So there's stuff that we know that we take for granted as institutional knowledge that people on the outside just don't know. Just don't know that no, you don't write a check to an agent to represent you, or you don't write a check to an agent to get you in to see a casting director. When those are things that are going on out there that you just want to certainly protect your kids from.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Anyone want to add to that? Sorry. I'm getting a lot of questions, and I think we knew this was going to come, as to what we think the state of everything's going to be post COVID. So obviously there's not much information... I know there was an article today in the LA Times, a lot of people in the Hollywood world talking about what they think. Obviously this is a very subjective opinion based question. But what do you guys see as the state of things with all your different roles?
Michael Pitt:
So I can talk to production a little bit. So production is the must important thing for the studios right now. They need to continue to fill the content pipeline. I'm hearing, not only my show that I'm working on right now, but I'm hearing July, August, September for shows to start shooting again. Pretty much everybody, in the same way that the scientists are all working together to figure this out, the production people are really talking to each other every day, the studios have task forces to figure out protocols for set, on how to do it. They're talking about specific pods, they're talking about how to clean things, they're talking about what to do about food and stuff like that. But production should begin, hopefully, July, August, is what we're hoping for.
Stan Brooks:
I'm supposed to direct a movie in July. I was supposed to be in prep in May. And I've been talking to the studio, Sony, I've been talking to them about this, and I think they feel like it's going to roll out [inaudible 00:54:57] back in production kind of the way it rolled in, which is there's not going to be somebody waving a checkered flag saying, hey, we're back to normal. There's probably going to be, at the beginning there'll be certain cities that will allow it, certain cities that won't. There'll be social distancing on set. I think there'll be masks and gloves. And I think probably... I was told on my project there'll be no actor touching and kissing. So they'll try and keep actors from having to have any kind of contact if you can... So they'll be incumbent upon the screenwriters to fix some of those things. And they'll try and limit to very few locations so there's no moves and you can keep places clean and safe.
Stan Brooks:
I don't think we're going to immediately go back to what we were, but I think there'll be certain guidelines and rules that will be set up as we go in. I know that Steven Soderbergh is championing a whole organization within our guild, the DGA, to try and come up with how those things are going to happen and make sure that there are rules in place when we go back to work.
Kerri Berney:
And on a TV network side, it's all a waiting game in terms of what we're supposed to... Last week of September is when the new TV shows premiere and we haven't even picked the TV shows yet, or finished pilots, and that usually happens in the first week and second week in May. So right now we don't know what's going to be airing in September or October or November, or whenever the broadcast season actually starts. So that's fun. And of course, my network had the Olympics this year which were pushed. So I think I heard we 180 hours of hole to fill, accommodate for, just because of sports due to the NHL playoffs and the Olympics, and just now we have to figure out basically repeats and then any reality shows that happened have been finished, or any reality shows that we can finish while still socially distancing ourselves. I don't work in the production world but I just hear about it because we do program-
Stan Brooks:
Michelle, in my AFI class, I had Kerri's best friend, actually, in my class. And she's head of [inaudible 00:57:12] for Lifetime. And she was telling me that people looking for jobs, the first things that'll go into production will be unscripted because they can role right into production right away. They're much more fluid and mobile. And so they're going to be gearing up really fast in any place that there's going to be the opportunity for production. And they also can have smaller crews and be more flexible. And so they said they're buying like crazy for anybody that's out there that's pitching their... unscripted people are...
Michelle Simone Miller:
Already made contact.
Stan Brooks:
... people.
Erika Karnell:
So we had clients who had booked pilots and some had started shooting, but most had not. There are not many pilots that finished shooting this season because this really hit during that three week period where most of the pilots shoot. And there were a lot of late pilots this year that weren't planning to shoot until the end of March or beginning of April, so those have also all been postponed. So that puts a wrench in, as Kerri said, normally they're deciding now what pilots are going to get picked up and finalizing all of that. And then Upfronts have been canceled this year. So that's also going to be a big blow for getting those advertising dollars into the networks as well. I think the whole situation is unprecedented for every facet of the industry, for pretty much every facet of every industry. But I think even for people who are watching who are just casual interest people who just want to know stuff, I think what primetime TV's going to look like next season and possibly for a few seasons after is going to be really different than what everybody's gotten used to.
Michelle Simone Miller:
So I do have to wrap this up, unfortunately. I knew this was going to go by too quickly. There's a lot of questions that I obviously couldn't get to. Is there quickly just a way for people, maybe, that you feel comfortable with, being able to contact you?
Kerri Berney:
The easiest way for me, because I know that you put out our LinkedIn profiles, so that's already out there. If you reach out to me on LinkedIn, I'm great about responding and I love talking to people and giving advice. So feel free to reach out.
Michelle Simone Miller:
That's wonderful because I had a couple questions that I didn't get to specifically to you, so I'm glad that they're able to go to you. Stan?
Stan Brooks:
Stan and Deliver Films has a website. We have a Facebook page. We have Instagram. So hit us up any of those places. And send specific questions. As you can tell from this panel, I'm always open to helping Brandeisians.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Wonderful. Erika and Michael?
Erika Karnell:
LinkedIn is great also. Happy to answer questions and give advice and step up when needed.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Amazing.
Michael Pitt:
I don't have any of that. But you can reach me through Michelle if there's something. And again, I'm happy to have a conversation or offer some more advice or guidance anytime. No problem.
Michelle Simone Miller:
Wonderful. Well, guys, thank you so much. This has been absolutely, by far, better than I could have ever dreamed of. Thank you guys. You're such a wealth of information. So I know that you're definitely not only just inspiring so many people, but hopefully getting people to get in the business, continue going, transition to different positions. And I want to thank you. I want to thank everybody involved in making this happen. Please, again, check out Create@Brandeis Festival this weekend. And thank you again, everyone, for attending.