What Does It Take To Survive A Life In The Arts Today?

A Glorious Mosaic Of Interconnected Side-Hustles

I have spent my career in battle. But it was more of a wrestle than a fight. A wrestle with a giant cuddly bear. Kushie and squishy. Sure it wanted to eat me, but it was also my very good friend. I needed to push against something -- or at least believed I did --and that bear was my reason for action. What?! You are not got going to let me do what I want?! Why I’ll show you….. Get the picture? Sometimes it is that there is an opposition, that we are able to build any traction at all.

Perhaps if I – like everyone else – had been raised in an environment that promoted cooperation over competition, I’d see that wrestling match as more of a cuddle. A giant cuddle puddle – something we are all in together. But that’s not here and now, is it? One way or the other, it is about time I got down to setting free the bears.

This newsletter is a remnant of my eternal fight, as over time I havelearned to be more of a person of peace. It’s not the last remnant as I still have  my knee-jerk put-up-your-dukes extra-sensory perception. And sure, this whole year and 200+ drops of writing exercise is a continual repeat of the column I first wrote in 1995. I confess: I have always grabbed the great big brick of love to throw through that pane of “no”. Someone always has to show there are other paths. Someone has to love to wrestle our friends the bears.

I guess it grates on a few folks to have it pointed out that we could do better, that we could have actually built something that works for more participants — instead of just what we have now. Or they misunderstand, and think just because we are so far away from the better place, we think it isn’t worth doing at all. To build back better, you have to help people understand what it is exactly that isn’t working — so don’t pack it all up and open a liquor store by the beach, keep examining and offering solutions. Which is what we are doing today…

I think I have finally come to terms with these stormy forces of nature that beckon us to battle and stimulate creation from the chaos. As much as I have always recognized that the only constant is change, I couldn’t just roll with it like some. I push against it. As a former teen grappler, I should have recognized that sometimes it pays to go with the momentum and use that for advantage. Be like water. Yes grasshopper. Things are changing always, but why see that as a problem? The FKATheFilmBiz does not allow for a sustainable life, let alone a truly generative one, but can we use this somehow to improve things for all of us? Perhaps there is no enemy actually there. No there, there. Or perhaps we are our own enemy. Maybe we can make the chaos work for us.

It feels wrong that we have to find secondary means to support ourselves in pursuit of the thing we love, and even excel at. Would it be so bad to have all the artists and art-minded entrepreneurs be able to support ourselves by truly focusing on just that? No, but the world where that is not possible is the world we are living in. So perhaps we should be building the system that allows for that—the dual pursuits --, only in a more constructive way.

Recognizing that we are currently denied success-based bonuses, ownership of results of our work, any transparency whatsoever, credit where credit is due, and appreciation for all the value we bring to a project, be it in the form of renumeration or otherwise, sometimes we have to surrender our pride and address the world on the terms being offered.

So let’s look at the side-hustles and see if perhaps they can be constructed in such a manner that they allow folks to earn while we learn. Whether a newbie or a seasoned hand, we all need to expand our skill set, and perhaps with a little focus and planning the very thing we use to stay afloat could also motor us forward. Can the side hustles not be a distraction, but the scaffolding needed to build a better model? Hell, yeah.

Imagine if one of our nonprofit film support organizations decided to pivot from the standard mechanisms that they’ve been offering year in and year out. What if they tackled this sort of infrastructure rebuild instead? Let’s examine what we could build.

Are there feasible side hustles that filmworkers -- be they producers or writers, make-up artists or sparks (i.e., whatever) -- could use to both advance themselves and pay some bills? And if so, how come we aren’t training them now to master these skills?

The answer to the first is “yes”. The second gets a bit complicated. And dark. But there is a way out of it if you stay with me a few beats more.

The reasons why we have built the jobs we need to both help artists and the ecosystem can be attributed to both the individual and the limitations of both the power base and capital. This is a world that attributes failure & success to the individual, whereas it is the system plays a far greater role in each occurrence. To complicate it further, it is how we structure society and prioritize action. Everything is weighted more to accumulate debt than skills.

Currently, we each invest in ourselves in hopes of pursuing our dreams, but guess what? The system isn’t built for that either. To make matters worse, that was an impossible dream we were sold and no one’s been told of the alternatives. Things might be otherwise if we learned that cooperative sense of play initially, instead of always trying to win, win, win. We shun the necessary utopian thinking. So there we are hoping to express ourselves, be part of that dream factory enterprise, but there are few openings and the only opportunity requires us to sell ourselves short. It sucks and then it gets worse. Working with limited resources pigeonholes us and soon we’ve dug our own grave and have to make it our bed. Sleep tight!

That massive pile of suck is all driven by the belief that is a particular and singular goal we are working towards -- a finish line or giant net. I disagree. Firmly. There are many ends we should aim for and none can be fully articulated because they are never truly formed, and instead are eternally growing alongside us. Got it? Take it further: on top of that they blend and mix and morph. In this universe — the one that is real but we can not yet fully see — it is the accumulation of skills & tools that matter initially. They are the colors on your pallet and your rocket fuel. You are not going to know you can actually fly until the plane disappears. Step out of the plane!

Let’s discuss how to expand our practice and all we are capable of. After that, we can get into how it isn’t really the tools, but both how you use them and what you learn from the experience – but you already know that, right? You can still learn while you earn, gathering the skills that pay the bills.

Here’s the rub though. We have to agree that learning things or doing things better is a positive, something we value. I’d take that all as a given, if the process of doing so wasn’t so widely shunned by all our support organizations worldwide. Or let’s take it back a step. We have to agree that when we like things, we value them and when we value them, they are worth paying for.  Folks get stuck on this because most of us feel we don’t have enough money – and thus want things as cheap as possible.

I believe though that when we agree that good work should be compensated, the entities that either have the money or those that represent folks who need the services, find ways to get it funded. It is a process. You have to believe that things get better. You have to know what you believe in, what you stand for, what you deserve, and what you are fighting for. In doing so you improve things. Call it a fight or call it a cuddle, we have to embrace it. Let’s pay a fair price for all that we want. Trying to get off cheaply is destroying us, our love, and our planet.

My point is that if we focus on the side-hustle pursuits that our industry needs, we develop the skill sets that elevate our work. And it is a flywheel. We bring more value to the chain the more we learn and the more we apply it. That’s one of the ideas behind this list of Twelve Jobs The FKATheFilmBiz Needs ASAP.

This list (with their brief descriptions) below are all jobs that are missing in our industry – and they are not the only ones either. They are jobs that require only a little training to begin. If we had smart amateurs offering these services, things would work a whole lot better. If that blossomed into actual experts, we’d have a glorious garden of many colors. If those experts knew that real leadership manages itself out of the job, finding their successors before they move on to the next opportunity, we’d solve the problem of the leak of institutional knowledge. We’d be leaving everything better than we found it.

Come trip this light fantastic with me. Let’s dance on the path. We can build it better. Here are 12 initial steps forward.

12 Needed Side Hustles Of 2024 Film Ecosystem (and likely beyond)