Why You Should Move to L.A.

“It was kind of a Cinderella night.”
Emmy-Winning Producer Cherylanne Martin
August 29, 2010

Why should you move to L.A.?—You might win an Emmy and get your picture taken with Tom Hanks. I’ll explain producer Cherylanne Martin’s journey in a moment.

Yesterday, I wrote a post titled Why You Shouldn’t Move to L.A. which was geared toward screenwriters starting out and based on a quote from an interview with the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Rain Man, Barry Morrow. And even as I wrote that post I was thinking about the opposite view, which is why you should move to L.A.

And soon after I published my post a Hollywood assistant made this comment:

I moved to LA with no money or connections and got a low-paying job which barely pays my rent (granted, I’m not waiting tables – I’m working in development for a production company). Between my job, my girlfriend, and life in general, I don’t have very much time to write.

But you know what? Being in this town and in my particular line of work has allowed me to meet agents, managers, producers, and many many friends in very high places.

The main reason to move to Hollywood is simple….that’s where the film industry is based. That’s where the majority of jobs are located.  And there will always be room in Hollywood for interns and entry-level assistants who are willing to work long hours (12-16 on regular basis) for little or no pay. And every once in a while one of those interns or assistants finds a way to turn that opportunity and those contacts into a successful career.

Enter Cherylanne Martin. Before she collected a Primetime Emmy Sunday night along with Tom Hanks for producing the HBO drama The Pacific, she grew up in Maitland, Florida about two miles from where I grew-up. She is a year older than me and we both graduated from different high schools in Winter Park, Florida. She went to Florida State and I went to film school at the University of Miami. (I believe her major was advertising and she didn’t originally have her sights set on the film industry at all.)

In the early 80s I moved to L.A. and she worked as a production assistant in Orlando on Jaws 3-D (her first IMDB credit). I forget all the details but she ended up in L.A. working on features including being a second second assistant director (no not a typo) on Rain Man. (You knew I’d work in a Tom Cruise angle, right?) She also worked as a second assistant director on Far and Away which also starred Cruise.

By pure coincidence I met Cherylanne’s father after I moved back to Central Florida. He told me he was proud of his daughter because she worked as an assistant director on Forrest Gump. I was kind of stunned by this revelation because our meeting was not an industry meeting and this was 1994 when Forrest Gump was the biggest thing around.

He gave me Cherylanne’s address and she read a script of mine and wrote a nice note back. Since that time I’ve followed her career as she’s work with an amazing group of people including Rob Reiner, Michael Douglas, Michael J. Fox, Martin Sheen, Robert Zemeckis, Jodie Foster, Robin Williams, Matthew McConaughey, Michelle Pfeiffer, and several times with Tom Hanks.  She worked her way up from production assistant, to assistant director, to unit production manager, to associate producer, and then to producer working on films like Cast Away, Road to Perdition, and Nancy Drew.

So if you are looking for a reason why you should move to L.A. Cherylanne’s story is a pretty sweet one. She’s had opportunities in L.A. that she never would have had staying in Orlando. Perhaps not the norm for PA’s, but it’s nice to read a “Once Upon a Time…” story every now and again. Congrats on her success. I’m sure her dad is more proud than ever.

But Morrow’s comments yesterday were geared for screenwriters and really a charge for writers to get five scripts written so you have a command of the craft of screenwriting before you set your sights on moving to Los Angeles. Just remember that nothing magical happens when you first arrive in California. Whatever talents you have back home or acquired where you went to school are all you have. Earlier this summer I wrote a post where I mentioned that starting out Tom Hanks got serious stage experience working for a couple years in Cleveland, Ohio and has said,  “[I have] an artistic bent, almost a philosophy, which I learned for the first time onstage in Cleveland.”

The bottom line is both Tom Hanks and Cherylanne Martin (pictured above) are talented people who came from outside L.A., worked very hard at their craft, and found great success.

P.S.— Los Angeles will always will a great place to bump into people. Heck there are around 10 million more people in L.A. than live in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Check out my posts The Bump-In Factor, The Bump-In Factor (Part 2). But with that said, the Internet these days can change how you bump into people. How else did Screenwriting from Iowa pop up a few days ago on TomCruise.com in a post titled Guide for Aspiring Screenwriters?

Related post from other blogs: WHAT DO I NEED TO MOVE TO LA? YOU TELL ME RIGHT NOW! by Geloff LaTulippe

Scott W. Smith