I’m Not Afraid to Die on a Treadmill

June 27th, 2010Blog1 comment

Will Smith:

I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be outworked. You may be more talented than me. You might be smarter than me. And you may be better looking than me. But if we get on a treadmill together you are going to get off first or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple. I’m not going to be outworked.

A friend of mine said something similar to this a long time ago, and now he’s a superstar producer on his way up. Some of you know of whom I speak. And like Will Smith, his success has come to him because he stood by his word. In fact, if I saw both him and Will Smith running on a treadmill together, I would be afraid… For the treadmill. That thing would have to give out eventually.

A recurring theme in my work recently is that love is not enough. Oh yeah, you may love to write, love to act, etc., etc., but that’s not enough — your deeds must match your feelings. You have to make some sacrifices. You’ve gotta get to work, and then work your ass off.

I’m not sure where I’m going with all this except to say that I admire Will Smith and I admire our friend. And if I had to choose between being an unstoppable force or an immovable object, like our friend I’d choose to be unstoppable — because then you get to go places.

I’ve been lurking the Backstage Forum lately to see how the other side lives. Eighty-six percent of my friends are actors, so I know what a rough profession it is. And the only aggravating thing about reading the Backstage forum is that the majority of the posts on it are warnings concerning various representation/headshot/”acting school”-based scams.

A ton of scams also exist to trick writers, but I’m guessing that most of them are of the “send us your script and we’ll edit it and send it to Real Hollywood Producers for a fee” variety. At least the lies aren’t told directly to your face like in these acting scams. Plus a really disturbing situation is that a lot of these operations exist to specifically scam children and their parents. Hello evil, it’s nice to see you’re alive and well.

I think that because we’re in the business of storytelling — where great ideas are sometimes invented out of thin air — there’s this perception that rewards can come quickly and with a minimum of effort. But like ideas, people need to be refined and developed — and that’s a process that can take years.

Still, it’s fun to read about actors’ ups and downs. The emotional aspects aren’t so different from writing. I’m just glad I don’t have to drive all over town for auditions.