How to Cope With the Hollywood Downturn (Mentally, Anyway)

It’s a tough time to be in show business right now. The current Entertainment Industry Apocalypse (EIA) is upon us, and technological, economic and social changes continue to hit us in unrelenting waves. I see it in the trades, read about it in the mainstream media and experience it in my job as a therapist. While confidentially is a cornerstone of talk therapy, I can share certain questions that keep showing up in my work with entertainment industry clients. 

Can I Afford To Continue on This Career Path? This question refers to the nuts and bolts of our financial lives, a simple income minus expenses accounting of the situation. I hear clients complain about how there is not only less work now, but also less pay. It can be especially difficult when they compare what they’re making now with what they made in the past. The demise of syndication, the bust of the Peak TV streaming boom, production moving out of state, the rise in the cost of living, and other factors have made many clients pine for the good old days, even if the good old days didn’t seem so great at the time. Some clients fantasize about moving away and starting over somewhere else, where jobs are more plentiful and they can buy a 4 bedroom / 2 bath with a 3 car garage for the price of a West LA condo. Others who are determined to find that next steady gig wonder if, even if they find that gig, their careers will be sustainable. They feel like mice constantly searching for that next piece of cheese, and the futility of the search is making them consider whether it’s worth it. Which leads to the next question…

Do I Even Enjoy What I’m Doing Anymore? This is often a secondary consideration, after the more pressing financial one. Even if I get the next job, book the next show, sell the next pilot, do I still even enjoy the work? This is a common complaint in many fields, but especially with clients in the creative arts. They often got into this line of work because of their passion, the art of it, the creative satisfaction, and if financial anxiety, professional frustration and burnout have turned a once enjoyable career into a source of pain, well, what’s the point? Some clients find they still enjoy the work, and just struggle to find enough of it and get paid enough for it to continue to support themselves and their families. Other clients find it enlightening when they consider this question and realize that they do not, in fact, enjoy what they’re doing anymore. This realization is often a positive experience, a moment of clarity, as a client becomes able to verbalize something they had never said before, namely that they don’t like what they’re doing for a living and would like a change. Unfortunately, this is often followed by another verbalization… 

What The Hell Else Am I Qualified To Do? This is a question that can hit a client like a bucket of cold water. They’ve spent their whole professional lives building equity in their career. How could they give it all up and start over? It’s impossible! This understandable reaction does indeed make the idea of switching careers impossible, much like the idea of waking up tomorrow morning and running a marathon seems impossible. I work with these clients to break down an impossible task into manageable steps. They might consider what lateral moves they could make to take advantage of their skill set in a different position or related industry. I encourage these clients to reach out to friends who are working in other fields and pick their brains about how they got started. They’ll also be encouraged to speak with former colleagues who have made the transition out of their shared careers into another one. Hearing how someone further ahead down the path you intend to follow got there and what it was like for them to change can be instructive. I encourage these clients to take off their career blinders and imagine anything else they might enjoy doing, and even more importantly to give themselves the freedom to have a pie-in-the-sky approach and not limit the possibilities by focusing on the reality of actually making this change. Of course, the very real considerations about making this change are right in front of our face, sending us credit card bills and mortgage statements every month, so a final common question is…

How Do I Deal With All This Change? After considering all the previous questions we often land on this one. How do I stop feeling all this fear and anxiety? Unfortunately, the answer to this questions is: You don’t. However, I work with clients to reframe this goal by understanding that feelings like fear and anxiety don’t just go away, but we can learn to accept and manage them in ways that mitigate their power over us. Once we have considered if they can afford to continue on this career path, if they have explored whether they enjoy what they’re doing anymore, and considered what the hell else they’re qualified to do, then at least they’re taking tangible steps to address the problem and find a solution. At this point, we discuss things unrelated to work that can make us feel better. It can be easy to see everything in our lives through the filter of the EIA, but if we can deselect that filter we might find that getting more exercise out in the wonderful SoCal sunshine can make us feel better, that changing our diet to include more natural foods than processed ones can improve our moods, and that connecting or re-connecting with friends and family can makes us feel seen and supported. 

My clients often feel like it is an impossible task to get from the place they currently are in their professional lives to a happier one, but I remind them that not only is it possible, but that I’ve done it myself. After a burst of success early in my career, writing for shows like South Park and That ’70 Show, my career plateaued and then started to decline after the 2008 WGA strike. It was a difficult time for me, and I stumbled around in the metaphorical dark for years, unhappy enough with my screenwriting career to know I wanted to change, but unable to act because I didn’t know what I wanted that change to be. I asked all of the questions of myself that my clients now ask themselves, and long story short, I ended up going back to school, getting a degree in psychology, and becoming a therapist (“long story short” is doing a lot of work there). Today my experience with previous EIAs informs my work with clients dealing with the current one. I encourage my clients to consider these questions and temper their feelings of stress and anxiety in the present with hope for the future, assuring them that at some point they will be telling the story of their lives and say something like “long story short” and realize just how far they’ve come. 

Phil Stark is a screenwriter (Dude, Where’s My Car?), author (Dude, Where’s My Car-tharsis?), and therapist in Los Angeles.