They said I’d better take anything they’d got
APRIL 2025
Sitting in that Universal conference room, I thought back on that evening at the bar. At that entire period between Fall of 2023 and Summer of 2024. Looking back, I was shocked at the energy I had to try to fit in all of these ambitions.
For months, my desperation to pay rent fueled me to pick up as many shifts as possible. Didn’t matter the time. Opening, closing, mid-day. Overnight floor moves.
For months, I continued to write all those reports back to Blumhouse. Through the entire the Fall and past the end of the strikes. A few of my connections even gave me some positive feedback on my script when I finally build up enough courage to send it their way.
Soon after, a different development manager even reached out with an interview opportunity for a showrunner’s assistant role.
This was it.
I studied arduously for that interview, reading the upcoming show’s source material and studying the showrunner’s career. Everything I could do between my work shifts so as to not let the opportunity pass.
But I never heard back.
At least, not from the showrunner themselves. Nor from the development manager that passed along my resume in the first place.
No, the news of this latest rejection would eventually reach me in the form of an email from that original Blumhouse coordinator with whom I had been corresponding with the entire fall. The same one for whom I had stayed stuck in traffic for hours. For whom I stayed up late to send film report after film report.
In a heartfelt email sent out to several former interns, this coordinator informed us that they would be leaving their full-time position as a development coordinator because they had just been offered a showrunner’s assistant position for a new show Blumhouse was developing.
Yes, the same show I had just interviewed for.
They were unaware of my candidacy of course. And truly, they were far more deserving of that position than I was. But it was quite disheartening to have to find out that way. Forced to reconcile the utter disappointment of this news and the genuine excitement I felt for someone I viewed as a mentor. Along with the frustration of not hearing the news directly from the showrunner or the development team.
But, after a few days of mourning, I was at it again. Fueled by an indescribable hunger and discipline to my every decision, I refused to slow down for myself or anybody. Not even as the connections and opportunities seemed to dwindle with every passing day.
As past coordinators either left or were let go by Blumhouse and FX.
As mentors stopped responding.
As job postings continued to dry up despite the end of the strikes.
But then, sitting there in that team lead training room, blank paper still laid out in front of me, I felt all that exhaustion from the past year and a half come crushing over me. All the disappointments. All the late nights. All the unanswered emails.
Two years full of nothing to show for.
A few days after this training course, I returned to the our retail store, where one of the assistant mangers greeted me ecstatically.
“How did the training go?”
I twisted my face. They were, at the time, one of the few managers I could be honest with.
“Was it bad?”
“No, it’s just, it was just so useless.”
“Why? It’s good to network!”
I scoffed.
“I’m serious! That’s how I met one of the donut guys inside the park, he gives me heads up on discounted merch…”
What in the cursed hell was she going on about? Networking? For what?
The most frustrating bit about this interaction was that this manager knew what my career ambitions were. I’d been transparent with them from the start that this job was only a temporary financial necessity. I didn’t want to grow here. While I genuinely believed I could be a good team lead for my co-workers, the main reason for taking this role was so that I could finally have a somewhat steady schedule. One that would empower me to better separate this world from my REAL life. THAT was the objective behind my decision.
It wasn’t to grow here.
It certainly wasn’t to network.
I suddenly felt trapped.
Two years had flown by and I was running out of tomorrows.
Two years in and the only doors opening were the ones digging me deeper into this grave of commercialism. I suddenly thought of all those trainers, telling starry eyed tales of their first day at work, aspiring for dreams not dissimilar to my own before slowly settling here.
A different manager had once told me, in the same backroom he informed me of my promotion, “I’ve been here for 24 years; I started as a retail clerk just like you.”
24 years. That was my age. And by the end of that summer, I’d be 25.
25.
Who’d want to stay alive?
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