schultzzz’s theory of competition
Ever wondered why why models say “People don’t understand. It’s HARD to be a model.”???
Or why actors say, “People don’t understand. . . it’s HARD to be an actor.”?
They’re not wrong . . .it IS hard to spend 90% of your income on your monthly facial surgery and give the remaining 10% to L. Ron Hubbard. And, it IS hard to weigh 80 pounds and stand still for 8 hours while people take 8,000 pictures of you. But, the fact is, Models could show up, eat 4 burritos, and snap a mere 3 pictures, and be home in time for church, and we’d be just as happy. it IS hard. . . but here’s the thing: All the ‘hard’ stuff is EXTRA. It comes FROM OUT-COMPETING THE OTHER PEOPLE WHO WANT TO DO THOSE SAME THINGS.
That’s my rule: the more people want to do X (and the fewer jobs doing X), the more that competition-skills eclipse actual X-skills. Every second that people put into out-maneuvering their peers for jobs, is a second they are NOT actually practicing their craft.
skills are REAL to the extent that they are non-transferable. They relate to thing X and only thing X. for instance, shooting a basketball or doing calculus or knowing how to do a heart transplant are real skills. Competition is a transferable skill, consisting of a mix of opportunism, shamelessness, backstabbing, undetectable deceit, egomania, schmoozing, meticulous friend-collecting-and-rolodexing, and manipulation. . . . if you can outcompete your peers at selling insurance, you’re probably going to be able to sell shoes and comic books. If you can shmooze Hollywood executives, you can shmooze art collectors and influential academics. schmoozing is like some kind of viral meta-skill that just endlessly proliferates accross jobs like the aids.
This is why actors today can’t act. Their ‘skill set’ consists 90% of knowing how to work the Hollywood system, and only 10% is left to learn how to pretend to be a wise-cracking alien. Politicians, having the most powerful, sought-after jobs on the planet, are even more skewed: they spend 99% of their time working the system, and only 1% actually passing laws. That’s why any reformers don’t get elected: not that there is a conspiracy, just people who care more than 5% about serving the people simply aren’t spending the 99% that is necessary to learn competition skills essential to getting elected.
The corollary to this rule: the more competition there is for a few jobs X, the more jobs open up for MIDDLEMEN whose jobs are totally not necessary to actually getting thing X done! The middlemen function as GATE-KEEPERS, who devise new and more complicated hoops for contenders to jump through to prove themselves. Ok, you can’t just wave your boobs around to support your team. Now you have to make a pyramid and smile and yell about balls a lot. You can’t just rap anymore: you have to ‘brand’ yourself and sell sneakers, cologne and large pants. And you certainly can’t learn about tax laws, social injustice, and the history of democracy – you have to learn about polls, spin doctors, tv makeup and backroom dealings.
An additional irony: the audience actually gives not a fuck about all that stuff. They’d be HAPPIER with random fine broads in the audience hopping onto the football field and shaking around, HAPPIER with politicians who knew the problems of the average person and actually, like, read the laws they were passing, HAPPIER with actors who had more emotion about their role than their burger-king tie-in merchandise. And, back in the real world, people would be happier avoiding office politics and actually doing their jobs.
In conclusion: the middlemen plus the emphasis on competition-skills combine to detract from the doing-the-actual-fucking-thing skills. Also they combine to distort and pervert the original goals of the actual thing. . . all these extra hoops are erected, connections eclipse talent, and the audience in time will care more about the horse-race aspects of the competition than the thing itself! Whether it’s pop music (American idol etc.) or politics (forget bush’s position on the issues. . . do you think his swift boat vet strategy will backfire?) or work (who cares if the report is done on time ? who is going to get credit for it?).
May 25th, 2006 at 6:19 pm
Steve, yeah, I tend to think you’re right. The disgusting competition inherent in anything remotely related to hollywood has made me want to stay as far away from “the industry” as possible, despite living about three blocks from Hollywood boulevard.
But anyway, your rant reminded me of how in Buddhist cosmology there’s supposed to be six realms of existence that you can be reincarnated into. The human realm is one, but the one immediately above the human realm is the realm of the asuras (also called the jealous gods). The asuras are ferocious multi-armed godlings who are smarter, stronger and more able to experience pleasure than humans. They’re often painted as being bright red with all these old-school type weapons, wearing golden armor and looking pretty bad-assed. The problem with asuras, though, is that they spend all their time scheming, fighting, and jockeying for power. So instead of enjoying their lives as bad-assed bright red super beings, they spend all their karmic goodies on finding ways to get one up on each other. And what REALLY pisses them off, is that just as we can see animals (supposedly another realm), they can see the devas or the God realm. The God realm is even better and happier than the asuras, so the asuras are pissed off and jealous their whole lives, even though really they’re way better off than us ridiculous humans (and let’s not even get into the hell realms…) Anyway, it seems like maybe this was a way they were trying to explain the detriment of competition-skills on life, except in the context of 5th century BC India.
Speaking of which, since you just had a religious revelation, maybe you can work this into your own personal Schultzian cosmology.
May 28th, 2006 at 9:38 am
Ooooooohhhhh, I might have to leave you in a huff over this one.. You are completely wrong about actors. Of course there are the few who get discovered while doing something entirely different but those seem to be the flash-in-the-pan careers. The 2% - YES 2 fucking percent - of SAG (Screen Actor’s Guild) actors who actually earn their total living through acting (and this includes the Tom Cruises, the Dustin Hoffmans, the Al Pachinos, the Meryl Streeps, the Nicole Kidmans, the . . . shall I go on here? - can you count the number of actors who make movies?) are the exception to actors. The vast majority of us spend years studying EVERYTHING. You have to play a brilliant mathemetician? You need to have a background in this to draw on it. You want to play a president? In order to be “real” - to give a true performance you must have some base of knowledge. Actors need to know everything and be willing always to learn more.
I spent 8 years studying acting and another 12 pursuing it in a very small regional market Did a few TV shows, one movie, a couple of commercials and fought the rest of the time to pay the fucking rent.. It ain’t easy and I am always first in line to correct people when they think it is. It is an art, and requires studied skill and years of training and a tunnel vision the likes of which you will never know (and neither will I). And in the end most of us choose to take a fucking shit job that affords us insurance and a paycheck we can rely on rather than pursue that which is in our heart and blood.
So fuck off on this one Schultz. You are way off base. Models maybe. And the wanna be actors for sure. But the actors who have trained and studied and suffered and sacrificed - jusyt lay off. You need to post a retraction here my friend. You are only playing into an ancient -ism against actors.
May 28th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
Hi catwoman!
thanks for not posting your rant in all-caps.
second, i hope you seriously don’t expect me to admit any kind of mistake — this is the INTERNET, after all.
maybe, though, we actually agree. maybe we can both be right? if it is only the most well-paid 2% of actors that make a living . . . that proves my point about competition. i’m not saying the other 98% are untalented. and i’m not saying that it isn’t hard work. i just said that a lot of what passes for ‘training’ is useless hoops set up by middlemen. but i guess it’s also true that like you said, some training is vital to the skill.
what i am saying, is that the successful people are great schmoozers. which takes practice. and for every minute one spends working on one’s shmoozing technique, that’s a minute NOT spent improving one’s dramatic technique. if you’ve ever watched some starlet who can’t act well, give a dumb interview and been pissed off that she is a millionaire, then you are basically on my side. welcome!
May 28th, 2006 at 5:29 pm
OK, I’ll give you the schmoozing points. But this is true of the majority of successful people in any industry. Schmoozing is a gift and really I don’t think its something you can learn. You either got it or you don’t.
Based on your reply to my comment you got it. I’m only telling you this because I know it will piss you off.
June 12th, 2006 at 8:59 am
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