“Tremendous interest in the superficial is very characteristic of cultures in decline.”
Martin Amis
We find ourselves at the beginning of a revolution.
In which an industry is reordering itself.
And power is yours for the taking.
Coming up in the letter:
💪 Your ultimate leverage
🧠 3 x Reader wins
🎥 favorite film ive seen in 2 years.
👍 A new (yet somehow old) poll!
But first lets look at The Stath.
moves
The average actor in the UK would need to work for 1,000 years to earn what Jason Statham got for Meg 2.
Why?
What is it about the Stath that causes a producer to happily hand over £12,500 per hour for 1,600 hours?
Or should the question rather be, what is it about the producer?
Talent
I want to put something to bed for you before you even get a chance to think it:
Talent is meaningless.
Talent is everything.
“Talent” is our craft, our camera technique, our “charisma”, our ability to endure, our desire to win, our networking ability, our looks, our plastic surgery, our do our own stunts, our “you scratch my back I scratch yours”, our virtuosity, our “the camera loves her”, our ability to remember all those lines, our stage presence, our “he was always destined for greatness”.
Your “talent” is defined by someone else.
By the person witnessing it.
By your audience.
If the most talented person in the world, is alone in the woods, and they screamed, “I AM TALENTED” no one would care because no one is there, and therefore it wouldn’t be true. They would also make absolutely no sound when the tree that fell on them squished all that “talent” they thought they had.
“Talent” is in the eye of the beholder:
You’ve seen people who you think have no talent be deemed the god of the universe.
You’ve seen people you think are the most talented people go into property.
It all doesn’t matter.
At a certain level, talent is meaningless.
97% of professional UK actors earn under £43k per year acting.
That is £19,957,000 less than the Stath got for Meg 2.
Do we really believe that 97% of actors, many of which, take their craft seriously and have dedicated their lives to the being the best actor they can be are £19,957,000 less talented than Mr Stath?
(the devil in my mind will whisper “Yes you are that much less talented. Because if you had talent, you would working more than you are now.”)
But this is where the acting industrial complex has done it’s job perfectly:
You didn’t get the job?
You must not be good enough.
bartending at 35? You need a new showreel.
Still no big break?
Must be your look, your agent, your headshots, your auditions, your ability, your choices, it must be you.
You are the broken one. (pay us to fix you)
Our belief in talent (and our lack of it) runs deep.
…
It feels arrogant to even write this down – but no matter how hard It is for me to do, I must not believe I am £99,945 (per day) less talented than any actor.
Que?
So then if it’s not talent. What is it?
What is the difference between the average UK actor and the Stath?
The difference is, the Stath has an audience.
A stars‘ power comes from the audience they bring.
I’ve always thought the idea of investing in whisky is a weird one
and investing in an artwork is also a bit weird one
and then the penny dropped that that is exactly what people are doing with films, theatre and tv.
They are investing an amount of money in order to make a bigger amount of money back.
People are trying to make their money grow, and they believe doing it through films/theatre is the best option.
A film or theatre show is just stocks and shares to them.
Give a shit about the artistic merits and right for the role.
Their motivations are quite financial.
Let’s look at how a executive producer might do the maths on this:
The Meg (2018) made $530million. It starred Statham. Similar shark film (the Shallows, no Statham) made $119m They guess that some of that $400m is “the stath effect”
Market research
“Would you see this film?” – 60% say yes
“Would you see it if Jason Statham stars?” – 75% say yes
That 15% bump gets translated into projected ticket sales
Ultimately, If the Stath’s name on the ticket brings in £100 million more in ticket sales, paying him £20 million makes complete and utter totally legit, no problems with the industry, gotta love it, financial sense.
And what are ticket sales, ultimately?
It’s our ability to draw a crowd.
You are being paid for your ability to put bums on seats.
The Stath’s ability to bring his audience to the cinema, that’s his leverage.
When Carrie Coons says she wouldn’t be on broadway without White Lotus. What she’s saying is the producers wouldn’t hire her if they weren’t convinced a certain amount of people would turn out to see her, and now she has been in something that high profile, she has enough people who will buy tickets to see her in this broadway play.
If newcomer and “unknown” Anne Blogs was cast, they would be losing all the ticket’s sales that would have come from Carrie Coons.
So it’s true?
Maya Hawke got slammed for even bringing this up, but when she mentioned she was going to delete her instagram a director told her to be careful –
“Just so you know, when I’m casting a movie with some producers, they hand me a sheet with the amount of collective followers I have to get of the cast that I cast so if you delete your Instagram, and I lose those followers, understand that these are the kinds of people I need to cast around you.’”
A similar thing echoed here,
“
“If I have two actors up for the same role and it’s between actor A and B, and actor B has 2 million followers across all social media platforms, and actor A has 20 million, but they’re neck-in-neck in their acting ability, or maybe actor B is even a little bit better, but man we know if we convert one and a half to two percent of their social media following to buyers, I’m hiring that person,” Newman said. “I want to have a bigger ROI on my investment, so of course, I’m doing that, so yes, social media is playing a massive component in all of this.”
— Jason Newman, manager/producer at Untitled Entertainment
I have recently struggled believing the push back from industry professionals regarding this sort of thing occurring.
Especially when it clearly brings them results:
“
Take Charli D’Amelio, who made her Broadway debut last year in & Juliet. She wasn’t playing Juliet. She wasn’t even speaking—she was in the ensemble. But with 155 million followers watching her every move, her presence gave the production a huge boost. Ticket revenue jumped by about 17% after her first curtain call. That’s the power of platform.
— On Stage Blog
The show’s run was extended as a direct result of her participation.
If 1% of the people who liked her stuff came to see the show, that’s 1.5million more bums on seats.
A similar thing is occuring in the UK.
I was spoke to a writer/director last month who said he was given a list of people who he was allowed to cast in the lead role – none of whom were right for it, all of whom had a “following”.
He had to choose between the integrity of his story or his story being made at all.
I do not buy the industry professionals who are telling us a pre-packaged audience doesn’t matter to them.
But if they were to admit this was going on, they would have to admit to being driven by commerce.
And as we all know an artist who is driven by commerce is liable to being called a sell-out.
Or my name’s not 6 figure actor.
They maintain the lie of our industry as a meritocracy.
The Actor’s Dream:
“Talent wins out, keep working on your craft, keep putting in the hours, you will eventually get picked and you will build a sustainable career.”
Like the American dream before it, it is a dream.
And as far as business strategies go, it is failing us all.
So what do we do?
If Audience = Power
And producers are now asking for follower counts
and the old path of “work hard and hope” is dead
We start building.
We build like we’ve never built before.
We build a friggin audience.
We build a legion of superfans so entertained by us they will come and see everything we ever put on.
We build an audience so that we can free ourselves from the shit we have to deal with day in, day out in this industry.
In the same way that actors of the past built themselves a sustainable career from royalties, ours must now be built from our audience.
If we can bring 10,000 people who love what we do to a cinema – we have a similar asset to Statham.
The scales are different, yes, we should not expect to be making £20million. Aiming for that is aiming to win the lottery – again, bad business strategy.
But what we should be aiming towards is building a sustainable career making art.
Something that pays your rent, funds your projects, and gives you independence.
If you can find an audience of 1,000 people, 5,000 people, 10,000 people who care about your work, who love the shit you make you will be building yourself leverage.
This weekend someone did just that.
this will start to happen more frequently photo: hudson phillips
If you haven’t already seen, a self-funded film is currently competing to be the top film at the US weekend box office.
Made by youtuber Markiplier who asked his fans to request they screen the film in their local cinemas – he expected maybe 50 screens.
3,000 screens later its expected to bring in around $15million dollars this weekend alone (made for $3 million, $0 marketing budget).
Again, the scale is different (he has 38 million followers), but the concept is the same. When you have an audience who is invested in you, and you make your art for them, there is 0 need for middle men.
What does building an audience mean?
Lets be very clear about what building an audience means.
I am not talking about becoming an influencer.
I’m not talking about posting sweet sweet gym pics or avocado selfies of brunch.
And im not talking about vlogging.
I’m talking about making work.
Entertaining work.
Acting.
Short films, characters, scenes, improv in the wild, whatever you can think of, things that make people laugh, things that move people.
And here’s the kicker:
Sharing them.
Learning how to market them.
Learning how to reach the people who will fucking love your work.
Because make no mistake. That will be the game.
How do I reach the people who will find my work entertaining ↔ How can I make entertaining work that will reach people.
As we make things, we get better at making things. We use the exercise as a way of developing our craft. Not just our craft in acting, our craft in producing things. Making things. From scratch.
And we don’t have to do it alone. It would be better in the beginning if we don’t. If we form collectives (this is in part the reason for our 6fa community).
But we do have to do it.
Because the old way just isn’t working for us.
We cannot keep doing what we’ve been doing, over and over again, hoping something will change.
That is madness.
Audience is where an actor’s power lies.
Entertaining, cultivating, commanding.
Making the work you want to make for them.
No longer to serve the gatekeepers.
To leapfrog them.
And so the question becomes:
How do we build an audience whilst staying true to who we want to be as artists?
How do we find our people without becoming influencers?
What do we need to sacrifice to gain this leverage?
And most importantly – what don’t we sacrifice?
The creator economy playbook says you need to put yourself front and centre, make yourself the brand.
But we are actors.
We want our reputation to be built on the work we do. Not on becoming defacto reality tv presenters.
Because if we are going to do this, we get to define the terms on which we do it.
That is our power.
As you go about your week:
Think about who are the 10 people who would come and see you in something, even if it was terrible?
These are you first audience members.
Just think about who they are.
Next week: The Actors Who Hate Social Media Playbook.
If you have any strong feeling or ideas that have come up from this week’s newsletter – reply to this email. I’ll write back asap. x
This Weeks Reader Wins!
Huge congrats to reader Kat who this week smashed her London debut at the Pheasantry. An amazing show – congrats Kat!
And this is f*kn kl from reader Cal who made a short film during lockdown – utilising a network of friends to get it made. A testament to what can be made on £0 budget and alot of creativity. Really incredible work. This is Bear Shoots Boy (dir. Will Akbar)
Reader Tom’s cats have been getting fat over the winter. Well done them. And him.
Also DY, whoever you are – thank you. One day i hope you meet you and shake your hand in person.
Minneapolis
Bruce Springsteen’s call to arms. Thank you to reader Linda for sending this my way:
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