Earlier this year I was asked by Anglia Ruskin University to join their mentoring programme, which provided me with an opportunity to reflect on my journey; to look back to when I was starting out, having left school in 1991.
What advice would I give?
Not that mentoring is about telling people “In my day we used to have to get up at six in the morning, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill…”, it’s all about asking questions and discovering together where the mentee’s interests lie and finding ways to work towards those hopes and dreams.
That said, there was one truth that repeatedly surfaced: Persistence.
You are going to get rejection and you have to keep going and never give up.
Sounds easy, doesn’t it?
As a writer, I’ve had a LOT of rejection letters in my time. Too many to count. Dotted throughout those years, there have been a few “yes’s”, but in these glorious days of the internet, competition has never been greater. There are endless books of advice on the subjects. If you want to be a filmmaker, scriptwriter or novelist, the information is all there, waiting for you to discover it. You can even create your own Substack and show your writing to the world and ask them to subscribe for actual REAL MONEY!
Hint hint.
But casting my mind back to when I was starting out, things were very different. I knew I loved films. I knew I loved special effects in films. I knew that’s what I wanted to do. What I didn’t know was how or where you were supposed to get started.
1990
When I was fifteen years old I spoke to a careers advisor at school, who presented me with a book of job placements, made up of the sort of jobs you would expect: Bank clerk, butcher, British Telecom administration... Leafing through the pages, I wasn’t exactly jumping for joy. Whilst I wasn’t expecting to find work experience at Pinewood Studios or making tea for Rob Bottin, there was nothing in the jobs on offer that was even remotely close to what I wanted to do.
The poor careers advisor did her best to be encouraging…
So we contacted Jim Henson’s Workshop, and I received my first-ever rejection. I had taken my first step into a much bigger world; a land paved with “no”!
After much head-scratching, a distant relative who worked as a sales rep for CBS/Fox suggested contacting one of her clients, a video wholesaler. I showed up at their showroom, explained my situation and… they said no. They were merging with another company and were closing soon. I left with the address of the other company, wrote to them, got an interview and… they said yes.
Persistence.
And it was fifteen-year-old me’s idea of job heaven. A warehouse full of VHS videos. Free posters. Cheap ex-rental films unavailable to buy in the usual shops.
But then comes the real world.
My final conversation before leaving school forever was with my geography teacher:
“What are you going to do for a job?”
“I’m going to work in special effects.”
*Teacher just looks at me, and eventually says* “You do know that’s going to be almost impossible, don’t you?”
Needless to say, he had a point. I had no contacts in the television or film industry. I had no idea of who to ask for a job, where to start or even what job I should be applying for. I’d left school with less-than-desirable exam results. I was certain I didn’t want to go onto further education/sixth form because I’d just spent the last eleven years counting down the days until I was free from school. (I had what was unrecognised as anxiety pretty much the entire time I was there, so I just did my best to keep my head down, get on with it and get out ASAP.)
Utilising my naively simple teenage perspective, I pondered the million-dollar question: Who did I know who worked “in the industry”? Famous people. They were already there, doing it, working. Surely they would know where to start? How to get a foot in the door? Right? RIGHT?
Those were the days before anyone had even heard of being “off-grid”, so I would bus it into town and spend my days at THE BIG LIBRARY - the only place that had copies of industry books like Spotlight - and sat there writing out names and contact addresses of anyone and everyone I’d ever heard of who was working in film and television.
I wrote until my hand ached. I couldn’t afford to photocopy anything, as I was practically reproducing entire volumes in my own handwriting. It’s no exaggeration to say I sent out hundreds of letters. The replies came thick and fast, and sometimes never.
There were the generic:
The well-wishing you’ll-get-there-in-the-end response:
The slightly-more-understanding-my-plight response:
The naff-off-and-stop-bothering-me response:
In a league of his own, Tony Slattery actually returned my letter having crossed out most of it as a form of editing, and told me what I should be asking for. “You want to be a Runner.”
And he included a headshot signed ‘love Tony’. And he had used the back of my letter to make notes or a shopping list of some sort.
But, there were some responses which did their best to suggest something real and tangible:
And this letter from Bob Keene, who was one of the leading FX artists working in the UK at that time.
The takeaways I learnt from these letters were:
a) Buy broadcast magazines.
Broadcast magazines and trade papers weren’t sold where I lived. The closest you could get was a copy of The Stage in WH Smiths.
b) Most famous people wanted an SAE. 1991-version-of-me disagreed. He didn’t have a pot to pee in, and given how many letters he was sending out, believed famous people could take the hit of 18p.
c) John Nettles chucked my letter in a hotel waste paper bin. Someone wrote to me letting me know, also expressing their dislike of the man. Fair play.
One thing I did have a knack for back then was taking the long shot, because what other option was there? At some point in 1991, British special effects maestro Chris Tucker appeared on ITV’s This Morning. Apparently, he was interviewed by Fred the Weatherman. I didn’t know, because I’d totally missed it. But my Mum had seen it and suggested I should write to them asking for Tucker’s contact details. (Long shot, see?)
I did just that, and a few weeks later Fred the Weatherman phoned me up to say he had passed my letter onto Chris Tucker. He ended the call by saying “Right, better go. I need to get on my map.”
(In hindsight, this phone call may not seem so cool given how Fred Talbot’s story panned out.)
To my utter amazement, Chris Tucker’s partner/wife (?) telephoned me, very animated and enthusiastic, requesting I should visit Chris to discuss work. She asked about my skills and interests, and I hung up the phone believing I was almost guaranteed a job.
Persistence.
When I met Chris, to my soul-crushing disappointment, his response was the total opposite. My dad had driven me all the way to Tucker’s huge house, somewhere in Pangbourne, only to receive the equivalent of a big, fat raspberry.
There were some cool moments: I got to see Tucker’s FX room and face castings of actors like John Hurt and Laurence Olivier, but… it was the most depressing couple of hours ever. Tucker was gruff and blunt to the point of rude - I liken him to a child who had ruined his own birthday through sulking - and any talk of employment was shot down. In fact, he advised me repeatedly not to work in special effects. According to Tucker, there was no work to be had. He’d just finished a job in India because there wasn’t any work in the UK.
Don’t do it, said the man in the big mansion.
It was a long, quiet drive home. My dream of working in special effects was over.
The only useful takeaway from what Tucker had to offer was this: Get as many strings to your bow.
Sooooooo… I wrote another letter. This time to a local theatre.
Again, no work at the inn. Unless you wanted to do it for free. Which I did, because the one thing I didn’t have was any experience. And it was time to get some.
Persistence.
READ Part two: Persistence, and the subtle art of kicking in doors!