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Famous for Fifteen Minutes

Management Speak: Management Lies

How Not to be Eaten by Aliens

Gandhi: Great Soul or Arsehole?

The audition

“You're all amazed that I've got A levels aren't you? I'm going to college.”

Naturally dizzy, but not naturally blonde. She stands by the till and tells of her adventures at the audition. Everybody commiserates with her. But she does not notice what is happening. Out of five people who just happen to be working in a shop she fails to shine and dominate. How does she expect to make a career out of drama?

She made it past the first section, so there must be hope. Quite right. One part, three hundred hopefuls. She makes the last one hundred and fifty. A lifetime in the theatre surely beckons. I ask her if she knows 300 actresses over the age of 50. No. possibly a couple of dozen. Still the penny refuses to drop.

The fact is there are very few people who make it at all in show business. At the bottom end of the business there are a lot of places for aspiring young people to kid themselves that they are starting a major career. Thousands of women who know they will have their name in lights by next Christmas work in strip shows, theme parks and chorus lines. Some only get as far as being waitresses. If we look at the ones who made it a pattern emerges. It is obvious that what the successful ones did was the same as the failures did, except they didn't fail. Thousands of women get jobs as waitresses for a few years, a handful get show business careers. The obvious lesson to be drawn is believe in yourself and you will succeed. But that is bollocks. The failures didn't fail because of lack of self belief. But you can't prove it, because nobody publishes the biographies of failed actresses. There is no call for them. So the message continues to go out loud and sickeningly clear. Keep at it. One day you will get that break. And the drama teachers pass that message on louder and clearer than anybody else. Without wannabe actresses taking all the classes they can get how will they stay in work? After all they didn't make it as actresses themselves so they know the value of dreams and the cost of a mortgage. So work girls, remember that video last night about Jennifer Lopez? She studied hard and look where she is now. She took all the classes on offer, now look at her. Now about that extra class in dance I suggested...

Is continuing to allow people to delude themselves like this a good idea? Would it not be better for us to tell our friends that they are wasting their time chasing a dream that will end in tears? Every Saturday morning there is a children's TV show with a 'phone in with some pop stars of the day on it. 20% of them may still have a record deal five years later, 50% of them will see next to no real wealth from their supposed stardom. Take the taxi to the studio. If the tour is a success you go in a limo next time. Every week hundreds of 'phone lines jam up with wannabe popstars to ask how to make it big. “Err, just believe in yerself. Yeah. Keep at it.”

Show business, like selling insurance or Amway, needs new blood on a regular basis. It wants thrusting people prepared to sacrifice anything to make money for their management. So keep dreaming the dreams, keep believing in yourself. One day you will make it. You must all believe that, all the millions of you who know you will one day be one of that few.

Don't think you are so smug just because you don't dream of being in show business. What are your unlikely aims? I am not trying to get anybody down and tell you not to try to do anything, just to think about what you dream about. How many people dream of being second rate quantity surveyors or assistant office managers in a textile warehouse? Most people have dreams of riches, success or fame. The vast majority of people have to settle for very much less than this. Do you really think that the reason the failures failed was due to lack of self belief? What would have happened if everybody had lived their dream to the max? Would all musicians have become the most famous musician of all time? Would every smart American kid become President? Would every kid with an urge to run have won Olympic gold in the 100 metres? Really? You think it comes down to self belief? The reality is that it does not matter how much you believe in yourself, your destiny is not simply down to will power. Such belief may be essential, but it is not sufficient.

The will power and self belief myth gets built up because those that have talent and success grow to believe in themselves and they grow to tell the story of their success in terms of that dream. That is a story that makes them feel good about themselves. These people were not just born lucky with exceptional talent or had lucky breaks, these people slogged and slogged and it was belief in their own worth that kept them going. How could people be jealous of such paragons of virtue? With selective memory and a few anecdotes and photographs they can prove the whole thing. The man who won the gold medals for rowing tells of his first go in a boat, not the previous ambitions to be a footballer, a bishop, Prime Minister, Admiral, motor racing champion, artist, film star, inventor, scientist, test pilot, boxer, astronaut, best selling author, business tycoon or lead guitarist for the biggest rock band in the world. He is not a multiple failure like you, he was single-mindedly devoted to his dream. He deserves the success, the money and the adulation, he is a better person than you, and he can prove it.

It is nonsense to think that people dream what they want to be and then go off and achieve it. This is real life, not a film. In real life people dream and try. Those that begin to have success remember their dreams of that particular success and talk about it to everybody who will listen, or better yet subtly allow other people to spread that message. Oh yes I always wanted to be a great opera singer. So why did you try out for the soccer team and do that audition for the theatre, or take up wrestling? And why did you have that poster of wrestlers on your bedroom wall and why did you take those guitar lessons...

© 1999 - 2008 by Martin Willett.

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