“Hi, I’m with the United States Marine Corps, are you Christopher Rice?” My heart pounds out of my chest and my thoughts storm behind the back of my wide eyes. “Could I be in this much trouble?”

Apparently I had actually enlisted myself, on accident of course, via electronic submission into the Marine Corps. This mistake was due to the power of the film that inspired me to make movies. If I weren’t thirteen years old at the time I certainly would have been thrown in jail for tampering with the enlisting process or thrown on to the front line of a battlefield, which, come to think of it, I have been! Welcome to Hollywood!

Hi, my name is Christopher Rice and I’m a Hollywood Runner. I currently work at a large production company located on Sunset Blvd. Here’s how I got here and how you can too…

In seventh grade, a friend of mine gave me a videocassette of an upcoming war film nominated for best picture. I was captivated and watched the film every day before and after school. The film was ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and for me … inspiration.

Inspiration can be tricky and it may falsely lead you to places you don’t want to go … like the Marine Corps. After the Marine tried to recruit me AND my cousin, I figured that I was actually into movies – not the military. So I produced a bunch of experimental scenes and shorts and fell in love with the feeling of presenting it to an audience.

After many more shorts, I talked to a friend’s roommate, who was currently directing a short film called ‘Spoonaur’. We were invited to help out on set as PA’s and see, first hand, how movies were made. I worked up to 23-hours a day as a PA, grip and still photographer at CLU were I learned the basic “grip language” and set activity. I learned about C-stands, 12 x 12 silks, duckbills, the martini-shot – the list goes on!

The summer post of graduation led me onto the set of, “The Caper”, a Bank Robbery feature film shot in High-Def. Although it was a quick shoot, Ill never forget shooting in the porn-studio (quick pointer … don’t touch anything!), setting up the camera in the back of the truck while on the way to the location (true guerilla filmmaking), and shooting at the gay bar during a busy night (There’s no locks on the bathroom doors!). Oh, and not to mention how I drove the truck down a one-way street, hit someone’s fence and fled the scene making it my first and only “Hit and run” … again, another story.

While reading the bookstore’s section on film, which everyone should do, I made a decision to learn to write in order to improve my directing. After all, the director’s job starts with the understanding of a story and script. So while my friend went on to intern on other film sets, I interned with the production companies as a script reader - where I would be issued seven to ten scripts to read every two weeks. There’s no better way to learn how to write stories than to read them. Lots of them!

Ironically, I set up my first appointment while in the middle of the Caribbean and had to schedule a meeting around my situation … casually of course. Shortly after, I landed another internship with a writer management company and before I knew it I was reading more scripts than I could handle. I interned for six months with the companies until I started slipping away to Universal studios every day for inspiration. Later, I moved on to an internship that exposed me to production submissions, script contest judging, and even story consulting. This allowed me to build a fair resume for my age and learn what kind of mistakes writers tend to make for themselves.

Still pursuing directing, I had been producing experimental shorts and eventually wrote a script and went into production with it as my first BIG short film. But that’s another story. I was fired from my day job, so I decided that its time to buckle down and created a revised resume with the help of my girlfriend and her mom. I submitted it via E-mail, via fax, and even made cold-calls to everyone in the Hollywood Creative Directory.

I chased a lead from an executive at a production company, received rejections from others and even worse and most common, I heard nothing at all. This is what actors feel after every audition! I received three rejection E-mails from the 300 resumes I sent out – which simply proves that you only receive about one response per one hundred submissions. One day while waiting for an interviewer to meet me at a coffee house off of Sunset – who ended up never showing, I received a call from a production/distribution company in need of a runner. I met with them the next day, landed the gig, and here I am today fighting my way up the food chain. I MADE IT! Looking back, though, the only reason I got the job was because I kept submitted my resume, they approved of my experience, and they happened to be in need of a runner. This is how I learned about being in the right place at the right time. You may have heard this ten times, but until you actually understand what it means, you won’t be able to take advantage of it.

Use job boards on the net and send out resumes via E-mail (probably your best bet these days), via fax – which will open your chances for employment when they open the resume filing and check for possible new-hires, and produce material for your long-term goal such as screenplays or short films. By doing all of this, you heighten your chance of being at the right place at the right time. I like to think of it as a hallway … the more doors you create for yourself, the better the chance of one opening becomes.

I can’t stress the level of patience and persistence you must exercise in order to land a job in Hollywood, but at the same time, I can’t stress the feeling of actually working in Hollywood showbiz! It’s quite bizarre to walk through the reception area of the production company every day as eager actors wait to audition for the latest role, drive by the biggest studios in the world, and even get coffee for everyone. Why? Because it reminds me that even if you’re at the bottom of this business, you’re still in the business! Right place, right time, plus a little luck and you’ll be driving under the same palm trees as the pros! So to start you off on the right foot I’ll just say one more thing. Good luck!

Christopher Rice
ScriptDig.com