Musings of a Restless Mind

A long, long time ago (1974) in a land not very far away (Hollywood), I ran into a brick wall, and that was a good thing. You see I had graduated college with my BA in History and a dream of being a successful writer. I was busy writing stories and sending them off for the potential payment of a minuscule half-cent a word. Those were the times when a George Lucas or Steven Spielberg could come from nowhere (actually USC film school) and work their way up in The Biz.

California community colleges at the time were free to attend, and my local one had classes on TV scriptwriting and acting by a professional TV director, so I signed up for classes. Being a member of the Director’s Guild of America (DGA), my instructor had seen a note in the DGA’s newsletter that they were starting a training program to hire Second Assistant Directors, and he told me about it. They said they wanted to cast a wide net to get a broader spectrum of folks into the business. The only qualification was you had to have a bachelor’s degree and then take a test up at USC. Now Second Assistant Director sounded like a flunky, but, if they took you, they guaranteed you 60 days paid work in the business. In Hollywood where sometimes the whole shooting schedule of a movie is 20 days, that’s a lot. The idea was you got your foot in the door, made yourself useful, and could make connections for further work. Then you were on your own, and, in the movies, that was how careers started. I’ve always been good at tests, so I decided to go for it.

The whole thing was very professional. As well as proof of your degree, you had to provide a picture of yourself, so you couldn’t hire a shill to take the test, I guess. When I got to the USC campus on the designated Saturday morning, I was amazed to find 4,000 others there from all over the country to take the test. This wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought. The test itself was an all day affair. About half of it was a standard IQ test, but the other half was more directly related to the job and was fascinating. One part had 4 sets of 3 or 4 polygons and a final polygon. You were supposed to designate the set of polygons that could be rearranged into the final polygon. I’m sure I flopped like a seal on a fishing boat on that one. My spatial sense is not all that good. In one other part I remember, you were given 3 rows of 3 dots and presented with two side-by-side pictures. The goal was to mark the dot that matched how you had to move the camera from the first shot to get the image in the second shot. I was non-plussed at first, but then realized if I stared at the first image for a few seconds, then quickly at the second, I could move my head to match the way the camera had to move. If anybody had looked up at me bobbing my head back and forth, I’m sure they must have thought I was crazy, but I felt pretty confident I did well on that part.

In any case, after a month or so, they notified me that I was one of the hundred selected for an interview. I was on my way! A few weeks later I showed up for the interview and walked into a room with about 12 guys, all looking down at the table. The one at the head of the table looked up as I walked in, compared my snapshot with me, and said, “Mr. Hood. Yep, that’s you.” He asked me a couple of questions, but still nobody else even looked up. Something was off here. When he got to the question, “Why do you want to be a Second Assistant Director?” I answered with, “I’m a writer, and I thought it would be a good way to get a start in the business.”

At that one of the others snapped his head up and said, “You know you’d be much better off trying to break in as a writer than with this position.”

“Maybe,” I answered, “but I don’t think you give that kind of test to somebody looking to be a Second Assistant Director for the rest of their lives.”

That drew a kind of snicker, and I wondered if I had offended him. A few questions later, and I was out the door, shaking my head and wondering what was going on. So it was no surprise when the list of selectees came out, and my name wasn’t on it. Looking over the list told me all I needed to know. In addition to over half the names being hispanic and/or female, the others were full of Washingtons, Johnsons, Greens or names I could imagine came from a heritage of freed slaves taking on dead presidents’ names. Maybe I was wrong about that last one, but it was obviously a minority hiring program even if they couldn’t say that. I took it in stride. Obviously in the 70’s the DGA realized they had a problem. At the time they had only 2 or 3 women who had ever directed a Hollywood film, and, I’m sure, about the same number of Blacks and Hispanics, so the DGA was an all white male club, and they knew that was wrong. I couldn’t really fault them for wanting to widen the pool in that way, but was mildly ticked off that they had wasted my time. I certainly understood why nobody bothered to look at me during my interview after seeing the pasty white face on my submitted picture.

Why do I consider this experience good for me? If I had succeeded, I would have probably had some kind of career in Hollywood, and I don’t think that would have been a good life for me, not to mention that it would have made it unlikely for me to reconnect with my future wife.

The title of this essay is obviously not about my personal journey, but about where our culture has gone since then. I thought about writing more about the implications and the way things have proceeded in the 50 years since my personal experience, but many others have gone there, and it seems better to just leave my own little reminiscence.