by David Fairhurst
International economics is not something I normally lie in bed worrying about, but New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman had been the guest on “Charlie Rose” that night, and he was plugging his then-new book, “The World Is Flat,” in which he describes how the traditional top-down model of global economics has been replaced by a broader, more level playing field.
Once I’d satisfied myself that it was unlikely acting jobs would be outsourced to Bangalore anytime soon, I started thinking about how Back Stage could take advantage of this new paradigm. And that’s when I had one of those moments that happen too seldom in life—when some long-dormant neural path in your brain suddenly sparks and you think, “Oh, my God! I can’t believe nobody ever thought of this before!”
What if there were a website, I thought, where every actor could build a page containing not only his or her headshots, résumé, and reel, but a list of industry “friends”: both social acquaintances and showbiz colleagues—your agent and manager; all your former teachers and directors; all the people you’ve worked with in plays, films, classes, seminars; all the people who know your talent, your character, your work ethic, and can vouch for you? And what if clicking on one of these names brought up that person’s page, with a list of all of his or her industry friends, forming a geometrically expanding web of connections linking you to the rest of the entertainment industry? And what if each of these names was further linked to the archives of The Hollywood Reporter, Ross Reports, the Hollywood Creative Directory (all of them owned by the same company that owns Back Stage), and IMDb—allowing you to access every news story, production report, and industry listing containing each of the names on your friends list, opening up another universe of industry connections? And what if this whole elaborate matrix was searchable, so that one click would allow you to see exactly how, and how closely, you’re linked to any other person in show business—a sort of massive, industry-only version of Six Degrees of Separation?
Oh, my God. Can you imagine what an incredible networking tool that would be? I pay $68 a year for my Actors Access subscription, but I’d gladly pay three or four times that for access to a tool this powerful. I spent the next several days creating a PowerPoint presentation to show to my bosses at Back Stage and testing the concept—which I dubbed the Networking Matrix (yeah, I hate the name, too).
Since the site didn’t actually exist, the only way to test it was through endless trial-and-error online searches. Nevertheless, after several hours I managed to find four separate pathways linking me, an unknown New York actor, to Brad Grey, CEO of Paramount Pictures—the closest one involving just two degrees of separation! Should I ever need to get my headshot into the hands of Brad Grey, I can now do it by giving it to someone who actually knows him personally. There’s still no guarantee he won’t toss it in the trash, of course, but at least now my odds are a heck of a lot better than simply stuffing it in an envelope and dropping it in the mail. And if the Networking Matrix had actually existed, finding this link would have taken me not hours but seconds!
I thought it was a million-dollar idea. And it was. Literally. If the concept sounds familiar, that’s because, essentially, I had invented a beefed-up, showbiz-only version of MySpace—before most people had ever heard of MySpace, including me. When I presented the idea to my bosses, however, they were intrigued but felt it wasn’t feasible given the company’s current technology. And I never heard another word from them about it. (MySpace, need I mention, is now a $580 million company. And I derive no satisfaction from the thought that the powers that be at Back Stage are probably kicking themselves right now that a lowly, underpaid copy editor presented them with a $580 million idea, and they passed on it…. Well, maybe a little satisfaction.)
So it seems that for now, actors will be stuck networking the old-fashioned way.
The whole idea of networking used to terrify me. Part of the reason acting appealed to me as a geeky, pimply, girl-repellant high schooler was that I no longer had to be my own insecure teenage self. I didn’t have to think up clever things to say—the playwright did it for me. I could disappear inside another person’s skin for a while, and nothing was more relaxing. But having to “network”? Being forced to forge personal relationships with strangers? Ugh! That’s exactly what I was trying to avoid!
So I went about my job of being an acting newbie—taking classes, auditioning, helping out behind the scenes—while studiously avoiding the awful thought of “networking.” And along the way, good things started to happen: I volunteered to run lights for a show whose board operator had quit at the last second, and the playwright rewarded me by writing me a role in his next play (it’s still one of my favorite parts). I was helping out an actor I’d met on a day job, and he told me about a manager who was looking for new people to freelance with; the next thing I knew, I had my first batch of commercial auditions as a New York actor. I was acting in an indie film and casually mentioned to an extra—a veteran character actor, though I didn’t know it at the time—that I was enjoying his work in the scene, and, lo and behold, he hooked me up with his agent.
And somewhere along the line, it hit me: Is this what they mean by “networking”? Is that all there is to it? Just work hard and be nice to people and help them out whenever you can, and good things will happen to you? Wow. That was easier than I thought. And it occurred to me how powerful—and how effective—this concept was. I realized that most of the best breaks I’d had in my career resulted not from the quality of my acting but from the quality of my relationships, and that those relationships had materialized out of thin air, with seemingly no effort on my part.
Maybe it was the term itself that misled me. For me, “networking” conjured the image of back-slapping, glad-handing guys in suits ordering gin-and-tonics in a chintzy hotel bar at a business conference. Networking meant sucking up and kissing ass and pretending to like people you really despise, simply because they can help your career. It never occurred to me that being reliable, hard-working, and generous was all it took.
Now, I don’t want to paint myself as some kind of do-gooding saint. Believe me, I can be a genuine A-1 asshole, especially after a long day as a pencil-pushing, paper-shuffling, office-politicking cubicle dweller. But having the chance to collaborate on a new play with a wacky bunch of actors and fellow former artsy high-school outcasts—well, to this day it makes me smile just thinking about it. And that just doesn’t happen when I think about having to impress some industry bigshot.
Come to think of it, maybe the very reason the Networking Matrix occurred to me—the reason I was seeking an alternative, less hierarchical, more “flat world” type of networking—was that even now I find the traditional top-down corporate structure off-putting and prefer the more egalitarian world of the stage. And the Networking Matrix simply takes that world and digitizes it. So I suppose it was a clever idea, but really, who needs it? The old-fashioned way works just fine.
But jeez, Back Stage—$580 million! What the hell were you thinking?