The Brunch Table

Last week, our class took a tour of the Klasky Csupo animation studio. Near the end, after we were proudly shown interesting gadgets and several very nice offices (overlooking a parking lot raised from street level and topped with generous loops of razor wire)…we stopped by the office of their H.R. director. She showed us a closet full of demo reels…bricks and bricks of colorful VHS tape boxes, each one a long-shot chance at cracking our country’s elusive top-25-percent income tax brackets. And then she asked us:

“What do you think it means to become a success in Hollywood?”

“Getting a creative [design] job?” came one answer. “Getting to do your own show?”

She smiled, shook her head grimly, and spoke in a voice suddenly somehow reminiscent of Charlton Heston: “Get yourself into a supervisory position before the technology you trained on becomes obsolete. That’s the correct answer. When fashions change, they’ll fire a twenty-year veteran production worker in a heartbeat, but you will be sent for Maya training, or whatever, on the company’s dime, so you can understand a bit of what the new kids are doing.”

You could see that razor wire from her office, too.